Kindle ComiX: An Amazon Kompany

Amazon announced today the acquisition of digital comics leader Comixology in what amounts to a major bid to add traction to its own weak comic offerings. While Amazon lists 25,000 titles under "Comics & Graphic Novels," Comixology boasts twice that number, and an exclusive on Marvel and DC digital editions.

Additionally, the Kindle's "Panel View" option for fixed layout illustrated ebooks was clearly an attempt by Amazon to emulate Comixology's far superior "Guided View" for comics, which zooms each panel sequentially with each page swipe.

Unfortunately, very few publishers seem to have bothered to use Amazon's rendition, opting instead to simply upload a PDF or series of image scans and let the end users deal with its inevitable tiny text and low resolution art. This has made reading comics on the Kindle a less than stellar experience to say the least. Though is must be pointed out that this is not entirely the fault of the Kindle format, but of content creators who have not bothered to learn how best to use it.

With the inevitable integration of Comixology's technology into the Kindle ecosystem, it is hoped that some of the former's status will rub off on the latter, and KF8 will receive some thorough updates to bring the two more closely in line. The Kindle HDX devices are, after all, an ideal medium for viewing comic pages, with their bright high saturation colors and impressive pixel depth.

Unfortunately, Amazon has shot themselves in the foot by disallowing high resolution images in KF8 FXL files - unless the recent changes to the Kindle Publishing Guidelines mentioned in my prior posts comes to fruition and results in a significant upgrade to the current woeful standards. What use is a high resolution display if you can't embed high resolution images into its native ebook format?

Details of the acquisition have not yet been released, so it is not known at present whether Comixology will remain a separate app on the Kindle system, or whether it will ultimately be integrated within the Kindle e-reading software itself. I would put my money on the latter, as it only stands to reason that Amazon would want to increase the value of the Kindle brand rather than dilute it with competing software.

In his announcement of the deal, Comixology's CEO David Steinberger said that "ComiXology will retain its identity as an Amazon subsidiary," so one might assume it will be treated much as Amazon has done with Audible and Goodreads. But neither of these offered a competing product or platform such as Comixology's app does, so the comparison is all but moot.

Moreover, just last year Comixology launched its own self-publishing portal for comic creators, which is almost certain to be absorbed into the KDP platform, since it makes little sense logistically to maintain two separate distribution and disbursement divisions for what amounts to a single service. At the very least it's an encumbrance for content creators, who would otherwise have to decide between the two, or produce two source files to meet each platform's requirements, as well as pursuing an innately divided marketing strategy, none of which is efficient for anyone involved.

In the end, keeping them separate can only work to Comixology's advantage, with an adverse effect on the Kindle fixed layout format. Because of that, my bet is that Comixology is scrapped within a year or two and fully integrated into the Kindle ecosystem, with the "Guided View" code replacing the current "Panel View" feature. After all, why wouldn't Amazon want this as a key feature only the Kindle has?