Amazon’s making ComiXology much worse with its latest update
Way back in 2014,Amazon purchased ComiXology, setting its sights on digital comic books after conquering the e-book world. As one would expect, Amazon has slowly moved over a few features from the ComiXology app to the Kindle app, and so the ever-popularGuided View was added to the Kindle app in 2017.
This slow move of features was always leading towards a convergence of both apps, and it would seem there’s a ton of fallout now that comic fans have had a chance to test the ComiXology 4.0 update, slowly rolling out right now. It’s a complete rewrite of the app, replacing ComiXology with something that functions more like the Kindle app. Sadly the Kindle app still isn’t all that great for reading comics, and so tons of features that existed in the previous ComiXology app are now gone, angering digital collectors across the board.
More or less, Amazon is sunsetting the OG ComiXology app to spin up a new version that’s built off of the Kindle app codebase. This makes it easier and cheaper for Amazon to develop the Kindle/ComiXology apps from a single base, and from the outset, this seems like a fine reason to ditch the OG ComiXology app and site, but this is the part where collectors get to discover that Amazon didn’t bother to do its homework, and so the new ComiXology app and site does not offer feature parity to the old service.
It is now much more difficult to find comics and cruise for new books, especially if you collect individual issues. Amazon’s search isnowhere as good as what ComiXology offers, making it difficult to find individual books in a certain series. The sales section is also smaller (in the US), and unavailable in other countries, something that was a big part of the previous app andwebsite. Oh, and since the new ComiXology is basically the Kindle app, there is no cart when shopping, which means you can’t use Marvel’s coupon codes for multiple items anymore, another mainstay of digital comic book sales that’s out the window for ComiXology users (the Marvel app still works with the coupon codes, but who knows for how long as it’s based on the old ComiXology codebase).
Beyond Amazon ruining discovery and sales, there’s the library issue. If you’d like to view your ComiXology purchases on the Kindle app, you need totoggle the feature. If you do, and you happen to own many comic books you’ve collected over the years, have fun sorting through the mess that is now your library. Want to jump onto your e-ink Kindle? Yep, all those comics will be there clogging up your e-book library, creating a navigation nightmare. What’s worse is that if you own the same comics on Amazon and ComiXology, you may wind up with the Amazon version, and that versionmay be lower res or formatted differently, which means the very books you’ve purchased may see a downgrade in quality with no recourse in sight.
Oh, and if you own a large library, you get to download all of your books again. No way around it. Any comics you’ve archived in the past will all have to be re-archived. Your wishlist is possibly gone (butmaybe coming back). Sorting options are all but useless. You’re going to have to put your comics into Collections if you wish to keep your Kindle library tidy since some series list books in your library individually. If you’re a single-issue collector, this gets unwieldy fast.
Even those who read online through their browser aren’t left out of the fun. The ComiXology online reader is now dead,replaced with Amazon’s Kindle Cloud Readerthat does not support Guided View or zooming, ruining the ability to read any comic that contains double-page spreads (which is just about every comic book in existence).
Honestly, the list of issues appears to be endless, and yet the ComiXology 4.0 rollout will continue, with readers who aren’t updated yet receiving a warning in the old version of the app that the update will happen soon. It would seem Amazon has rushed out this update with little consideration for longtime collectors and users. Sure, it will be easier for Amazon to maintain the ComiXology app now that it’s based on the Kindle app, but this move certainly illustrates perfectly how quickly a digital collection of something can be ruined by the company in control of the service, be it movies, music, or comic books. What was once a clunky but manageable app/service has been stripped of its working parts and replaced with a cheap imitation. It’s a sad day to be a digital comic book collector.
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