Amazon to acquire Comixology

I&#x27;ve used Comixology and Marvel Unlimited before. Marvel Unlimited is a travesty on Android tablets, which is really unfortunate, because a subscription service like that is probably the only way I will consistently read comics.<p>Comixology&#x27;s app is certainly better, but it&#x27;s tough to shell out the money for something I could be done reading 5-10 minutes later. It&#x27;d be nice if they could get together a subscription service like Netflix, but for the smaller publishing houses like Image, since DC and Marvel will obviously go their own way.

It&#x27;s surprising that Marvel and DC didn&#x27;t purchase Comixology to prevent this from happening. We&#x27;ve seen what Amazon did to book publishers, I don&#x27;t see any reason to believe they won&#x27;t do the same to comic book publishers.<p>On the other hand, perhaps lower pricing&#x2F;subscription services is just what the comic book industry needs to get more people reading comics.

The people who are probably shitting right now are the local comic shops and Diamond Distributors.<p>Comixology, whether due to temperament or just due to size and leverage, was playing fairly nice with the existing comics ecosystem. Now, they&#x27;re owned by a middleman that makes Diamond look positively cute by comparison, and one with a fairly explicit goal of crushing all local shops of all types.

As long as their content doesn&#x27;t become Kindle Fire exclusive, I don&#x27;t mind this change.

The biggest aspect to consider here is that Amazon already sells digital comics that are usable on Kindles and in Kindle apps. I don&#x27;t imagine that feature going away, in the place of Amazon promoting the use a separate Comixology app.<p>Which makes me inclined to believe that Comixology will be phased out, and its features incorporated into the Kindle comics features.

This may be a weird reason to not be happy with this, but I pay for my subscriptions and purchases on Comixology with PayPal, and I&#x27;m pretty certain that will go away pretty soon now.<p>I&#x27;d love to think that this will stay the same, but I see lots of changes happening from this, most not so great.

It is amazing that this company succeeded. One would have expected that the comic book store owners would have effectively resisted but DC wanted something in place for the iPad launch and it just started the ball rolling down hill.<p>Haven&#x27;t been to a comic book store since the Android app came out.

If they add the Comixology library to Prime subscribers, I would pay double!

I wonder if this opens up the possibility of a Comixology API similar to IMDB.<p>My side project Longboxed.com could really benefit from a better datafeed.

I&#x27;m using a laptop. Is there a significant difference in the reading experience between their &quot;immersive and cinematic&quot; one and just looking at, e.g., Questionable Content on Firefox?<p>(I ask because I was going to try reading one of their free comics and they want me to &quot;register&quot; with email and date of birth and password and oh give it a rest for pete&#x27;s sake...)

Amazon seems to be really good at acquisitions, sort of like 1990s Cisco, although in an entirely different way (Cisco integrated well; Amazon leaves them alone, but provides services).<p>I&#x27;m much happier to see Amazon buy a company for product, as I then have even more confidence it will continue to operate, than virtually any other acquirer.

Maybe this was a defensive move by Amazon as eBay was partnering with Comixology: <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/05/ebay-pushes-into-curating-and-selling-digital-goods-launches-dedicated-marketplace-for-digital-comics/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;12&#x2F;05&#x2F;ebay-pushes-into-curating-a...</a>

On a similar note, I&#x27;d love it if there was some kind of media server for documents, pdfs, cbz, cbr files etc. that has an android&#x2F;ios app and web app (like plex) to stream to.<p>Anybody, know of anything like this?