Renowned comic book writer Gerry Conway, venting on ComicBook.com about ComiXology's recent iOS app debacle:
“By forcing readers to leave the app and go searching the Comixology website, add books to a cart, process the cart, return to the app, activate download, and wait for their purchases to appear, Comixology has replaced what was a quick, simple, intuitive impulse purchase experience with a cumbersome multi-step process that will provide multiple opportunities along the path for the casual reader to think twice and decide, ah, never mind, I don’t really want to try that new book after all.”
Exactly this.
There are a number of good comic reader apps for iOS—Comic Zeal comes to mind—but ComiXology always stood out from the crowd thanks to its awesome in-app storefront. Impulse purchases helped me get back into buying comic books, something I hadn't done since I was a little kid. They were arguably ComiXology's bread-and-butter.
When I needed something new to read, I opened ComiXology and tapped a couple buttons. Since I stream all my music rather than purchasing it, any iTunes gift cards I've received have gone towards comic books. And now they'd rather have me use their terrible website (seriously, it's bad, especially on iPhone) and input my credit card information rather than using my already-available iTunes account, all while adding extra steps to the buying process. It's like they want people to stop buying comics.
Now that ComiXology is merely another comic reader app with a shitty purchasing back-end, I can't see why anybody would bother sticking with it.
