But we can be certain that, as ComiXology is finally absorbed into the Kindle store, we can say goodbye to that dream, along with Jeff Bezos’s once acclaimed but now long forgotten ambition “to have every book, ever published, in any language available for Kindle customers” (finally removed from Amazon’s website in 2020).
Back in 2014 when Amazon first acquired the digital comics platform ComiXology, CEO and co-founder David Steinberger said,
We have long had the goal of making every person on the planet a comics fan. With Amazon’s help, this crazy goal is more possible than ever before.
At which point, full disclosure, I have no idea how widely accessible the ComiXology app currently is for global readers outside the Amazon markets, and whether Steinberger’s dream for a short while became feasible.
But we can be certain that, as ComiXology is finally absorbed into the Kindle store, we can say goodbye to that dream, along with Jeff Bezos’s once acclaimed but now long forgotten ambition “to have every book, ever published, in any language available for Kindle customers” (finally removed from Amazon’s website in 2020).
This past November (2021) marked 7 years since Amazon last launched a Kindle store – the last new Amazon market was Sweden in 2020 –
and currently there are Kindle stores only in Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, the UK and the USA.
But Amazon itself has 19 markets: Australia, Brazil, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the USA, meaning the six most recent Amazon markets do not offer ebooks (except through limited access to the US store).
For anyone outside the Kindle markets access to the Kindle store is a game of chance, with vast swathes of the planet blocked from even seeing the Kindle store unless, like me, they have an Amazon account registered by residence in an Amazon market. To be clear, here in The Gambia, West Africa I can access the Kindle store while signed into my pre-existing Amazon UK account but the moment I sign out of Amazon UK the Kindle store disappears from the still available Amazon website.
Such will be the fate of ComiXology as it is absorbed into the Kindle store, which looks likely to happen in the very near future, per a report in The Register, which tells us the ComiXology login page urges customers to merge their accounts with their Amazon accounts, and the blog warns that the company’s own app will be going away soon, linking to an FAQ page on how to access and read ComiXology purchases in the Kindle app.
