Comixology app to be sunset, users directed to Kindle

Only tangentially related to the topic, since it also applied to the old Comixology app and this move hasn't really changed things, but I hate how inconvenient (or downright impossible) it is to read legitimately purchased digital comics in any of the far superior 3rd party comic/manga reading apps. I could totally get into digital comics and probably would have spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars of my disposable income on them if they'd just let me read them how I want. Instead I haven't bothered with comics at all aside from the occasional Humble Bundle, and there are undoubtedly a lot of people like me who would otherwise be spending money but are instead driven to piracy just for the convenience.

I am actually curious what actually has more of an impact though. Which one would you suppose hurts the bottom line more? Giving purchasers DRM-free downloads that would attract business from folks like me but enable casual piracy, or driving away business from folks like me who specifically refuse to support DRM practices financially but make pirating harder for the "normies." The big corps obviously fall on the side of not caring about my business, and maybe that's the smart move. Kinda sucks for me though.

This isn't even a case of assimilation considering the Kindle app and the Kindle Comics site lack most of the functionality that comiXology did even pre-acquisition (9y ago) – this just marks the conclusion of a two-year-long, mindbogglingly stupid effort to methodically destroy everything of value the platform offered. The Kindle app is just an unnavigable hellscape for those of us with thousands of volumes and issues, and with the shuttering of the @cmxsupport Twitter account, there are now officially zero support channels to contact Amazon to request book fixes from publishers because Kindle Support still claims it's user error every time ("The bubbles on this page have no text." – "Have you tried redownloading the book on a different device?"). If only Steinberger had built an actual competitor to cmX instead of whatever DSTLRY is, we wouldn't now be left with zero platforms of old cmX's caliber.

For a company that started as a bookstore, I'm constantly astonished by how little Amazon seems to understand about books as physical objects or what people who love books love about them.

I've always been frustrated that it doesn't seem to care about print runs or editions or printings when you search. It doesn't even do a great job of differentiating when you search between an eBook version and a print book. Forget about more esoteric requirements like "I would like a non-movie-tie-in edition if possible." Their storefront's data model is, in my opinion, really poorly considered.

Comics in particular are rough. Sifting between results for individual issues, trade paperbacks, reprints, omnibus releases, etc. is basically futile. So of course they think "Hurr comic books are books. No differences in how people use or interact with them at all!"