Amazon to Acquire Comixology
While not everything you hear on the Internet is true (beware French models!), this one is… Amazon has reached an agreement to acquire Comixology, kind of an app and store and the dominant digital comics marketplace. Comixology has been instrumental in driving the growth and popularity of digital comics.
Comixology CEO David Steinberger said he will continue as CEO and the company’s headquarters will remain in New York City. “We’re in a better place now to bring digital comics everywhere,” Steinberger said. “We’re all about diversity of content and diversity of audiences. Amazon is good at a lot of stuff we’re not good at and we can bring out skills to their comics.” A big advantage of joining Amazon is that it allows the companies it acquires to maintain their autonomy. “We’re staying in New York City. They have an amazing track record with the companies they’ve acquired, from Audible to Zappos. Their CEOs stay on. We can keep our company culture. They get it. They love what we’re doing. They believe we’re special and we can continue to do that. This is going to be great.”
David Naggar, Amazon VP of Content Acquisition and Independent Publishing, said, “We’ve got a history of buying companies we admire, and Comixology has the kind of customer focus that we love. It just made sense. We do know that the company is staying in New York. After that we’ll have to see.” Amazon has informed DC Entertainment and Marvel about the deal. (Both are big customers of Comixology.)
What about Comixology Submit, Comixology’s digital comics self-publishing platform? Naggar said, “Amazon doesn’t make a lot of plans before it makes an acquisition, so we’ll have to figure it all out over time. But Kindle Digital Publishing has been big for us and so we love Comixology Submit. Comixology has had a positive impact on physical and digital comics.”
The news as some readers worried. Will Comixology continue to be developed for non-Kindle platforms? What about digital partners, like the brick and mortar stores that sell Comixology books for a percentage of the profit? And will they invest in the quality and flow of the images? Only time will tell. The deal should close sometime in the second quarter of 2014.
