People are STILL talking about Amazon’s announced plans to acquire Comixology, although it has settled into the wait and see mode for now, as the deal won’t be final until June. But while you’re making up your own forecasts, here’s more of what people were saying.
¶ JK Parkin at Robot 6 has a good overall round-up of reaction. :
¶ Albert Ching has the longest sitdown with David Steinberger and David Nagger of Amazon and perhaps the clearest statements of how new and developing this all is:
It’s early still, but for both of sides, what are you hoping to see from this deal? David S., how do you envision comiXology growing in ways that might not have been possible otherwise?
Steinberger: What’s interesting about Amazons’ approach, and one of the things that attracted me to it, is that when you have a functioning company that’s doing well, Amazon first just gets to know the company, puts the resources behind the company, we finish this transaction, and then we talk about what’s next. Then, we start brainstorming what we can do together. At that point, we really start digging in. In the meantime, we just do our business. As a wholly owned subsidiary, we get to continue our relationships the way they are, we get to keep moving in the direction we’ve been moving in, and we get to explore the possibilities forthcoming. That’s a very long-winded way to say we actually have not, believe it or not, made huge plans, on new features and new combinations that any one of us can think up a million really great things to do. We’ve got to think of those, and pick them out, and get it done.
Nagger says they are equally open as well.
Tech writer Andy Ihnatko delivers a benediction to the deal by comparing Kindle editions vs Guided View—Comixology’s native format has a clear superiority over Amazon’s.
ComiXology’s books are a joy to read, with a “guided panel view” mode that’s created by a storyteller’s perspective, not an engineer’s. Its comics are sumptuous, ultra-definition, fully zoomable pages that allow me to appreciate the meticulous craftsmanship that goes into a great page of art. I buy all of my comics digitally because reading a ComiXology comic is far more enjoyable than even the printed editions. How’s the Amazon experience? It’s the exact reverse. I bought Lucy Knisley’s fantastic graphic novel “Relish: My Life in the Kitchen” as a Kindle edition. I got through about a third of it before I went back to Amazon.com and ordered the printed paperback. The Kindle was just too hard to navigate and read.
¶ Over at Comics Alliance I take part in a podcast discussion along with Andy Khouri, Alison Baker, Chris Roberson and Matt D. Wilson. Some good informed discussion here.
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