The digital comic book landscape is heating up with a number of major announcements of new digital comic projects from creators like Scott Snyder, Jonathan Hickman, Jeff Lemire, James Tynion IV and Nick Spencer and now ComiXology is announcing some major changes in the digital comic book company going forward.
ComiXology CEO David Steinberger released a letter revealing upcoming updates to the company over the course of the fall, including a new app and the shutting down of the company's external website as it becomes fully integrated into Amazon.com.
The announcement of a new app comes with promises of much better filters and sorting capabilities, which have long been an area where ComiXology has drawn some criticism from users.
The most attention-getting part of the announcement, though, is that ComiXology would cease to exist as a separate website, with the external website eventually redirecting to a new section of the Amazon website hosting the ComiXology material. The letter even included a link so that you can preview what the new site will look like.
The other changes seem geared towards fully integrating the ComiXology experience with the Amazon user experience. The letter notes that "Kindle Unlimited and Prime members will be able to borrow from a large library of graphic novels and manga on the comiXology app" (in select countries). Therefore, it seems that this is part of a big push towards putting Amazons eggs into one cohesive basket, although while still allowing the separate ComiXology app.
Even there, though, the letter notes that "Soon, you’ll also be able to read purchases from comiXology on the Kindle app, giving you more flexibility to decide where and how you read your books," which certainly suggests that the ultimate goal here is to streamline the digital reading experience for Amazon users so that no matter what service you started with, you will ultimately end up a similar situation, presumably making it easier for Amazon to market the material moving forward, especially with its recent major deal with Scott Snyder for a host of new digital comic books.
There were also some housekeeping notices, like a promise to improve download speeds and allow users to read while downloading on Android devices.
Source: Comixology