Posted in: Comics, Comixology | Tagged: amazon, comixology

The Fire And The Fury When Amazon Hobbled Comixology – Part 2

What it was like to work at ComiXology when the Amazon-mandated changes hit, revealed for the first time.

Former Program Manager at Amazon and Comixology, Scott McGovern, has previously been very frank about the circumstances behind the mass firings at Amazon and Comixology in January earlier this year. Now he is prepared to be just as candid, or more so, about the omnishambles that went down over the merging of digital comics publisher and distributor Comixology with its owner Amazon's regular service. Yesterday, he took us through the first part of the lead up to the switchover. Today, he followed through, tweeting out part two.

Let's talk more about Comixology's merge with Kindle. I did a thread yesterday, which you can see [here[. You'll want to read that first. I ended it on a cliffhanger; It wasn't planned, but it made me laugh, so I went with it. You're welcome.

• Reminder #1 – everything I write is my opinion, and not the thoughts, wishes, or desires of Amazon, Kindle, or Comixology.
• Reminder #2 – Take everything here with a grain of salt. It's my experience and beliefs that I'm describing; It's my $0.02.

So, where were we? Oh yes. "[Migration] was fucking horrible." Things were very quiet in the weeks leading up to the merge. Most of the people I worked with weren't in-office, so it's hard to get a "vibe" off of Slack or email, but you could tell: Everyone was tense. It was a waiting game.

We knew the merge was going to happen soon, but the exact date in February was unknown. Then we got the word: It's go-time. In order to assist Customer Support (CS), non-CS employees were asked to work 2-hour shifts in order to support migration on social media. A merge like this would inevitably lead to an increase in errors and bug reports across all social media, so a number of us volunteered. I took a couple 2-hour shifts, and helped out best I could. It, too, was fucking horrible.

The feedback was overwhelmingly negative, and almost bordered on personal. It was incredibly demoralizing to watch the hate pour down on us; Like endless gasoline on an endless fire. I had to take some time to put myself back together, after I did my shifts. You can't read all that vitriol and not need to take a breather. But I was lucky, I only had to do it for a couple hours. Our CS team was not as lucky, because it never stopped. They've had to put with some absolutely awful messages for the last 12 months.

Look, I get that people were/are upset. One person in comics said to me, bluntly: "You took away people's comic stores." They're right. We did. But the hate and vitriol that some of my co-workers have had to take on social the last year is beyond-the-pale. Some of you have gone way too far.

The people who run the @ comixology and @ cmxsupport app are not the ones who can "fix the app" or answer the question "why did you do this". They're just human beings trying to help you out, as best they can. So, let me make a couple things clear (in my opinion, of course):

A) The old app isn't coming back. It's done, it's gone, kaput. It's over. Same with the old website. Same with the reader. This is the way things worked out and I just don't see it happening.

B) We have done our best to "fix the app", but with 75% of the staff laid off, I have no idea what type of updates will take place. What I DO know is that expressing your unhappiness via rage-tweeting the Comixology accounts won't get you far. You want to make a difference? Be polite, be firm, be persistent, and send it to @amazon , not ComiXology. Hit up THEIR social media, not ours. Twitter, FB, Linkedin, etc. Do I think it will work? Do I think that will move the needle? I don't know. But I've been following the Hasbro/D&D/OGL mess; Hoo boy that's a doozy, so anything is possible. And hey, look, I get it. I once sent a DM to @jack that said "Delete your site". He probably didn't appreciate it, any more than I appreciate him not doing as I asked, especially since it led to Space Karen. But at least I was polite.

C) I'm sorry, I really am, that we couldn't do better. I'm sorry we took away things like series subscription for non-US customers and that the sales page (my baby) became such a mess. Shit, some of you couldn't even access your comics… And it's very very unlikely you're going to get any message/apology/note similar to what I'm tweeting here, from Comixology/Kindle/Amazon. It's just not how these large companies work. There's no explanation or apology coming, IMO.

I like to believe that all of us at Comixology did the best we could with migration, and we were working on updates right up to the layoffs. We had a lot of stuff planned for this year. I'm hoping they can get some of it out the door.

Aaaaaand these twitter threads are not going as I had planned. It was only supposed to be one thread, but here we are. Brevity is not my strong suit. I guess you'll get more tomorrow.

We'll be here for part three, Scott. Last year, Bleeding Cool reported on concerns about the Comixology switch to the Amazon website and structure. We reported on the dropping of the Comixology website comic book reader, Comixology App only on mobile devices and tablets or using the Kindle reader on the desktop – which was not designed for reading comic books. Another big issue is for the non-Americans only, they were no longer able to subscribe to digital series for some undisclosed reason which may have lead to reduced income for publishers and creators. But as the Comixology App was also updated, a stream of other complaints came in, talking about how people's libraries had been removed, downloads deleted, the speed of reading delayed, definition degraded, ease of use decimated and we reported an account from a Comixology Beta Tester looking at the circumstances behind some of the changes. But there were many more accounts of what went down to share. And even when it got a bit better, it didn't get much better. Now, at least, we are getting some explanations.

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