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

Former Comixology Manager Talks: What Went Down With Amazon Part 1

Scott McGovern, has previously been very frank about former employer Amazon and Comixology. Nown he's talking about the Kindle merger.

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 Comixology with its owner Amazon's Kindle service.

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. Today, Scott McGovern posted a Part One to Twitter, replicated below. He writes;

"Comixology merged with Kindle about a year ago, so I thought I'd share some behind-the-scenes of what led up to that. Grab a drink. Disclaimer: I don't speak for Amazon, Comixology, or anyone but myself. This is all based on my experience. I may gloss over a couple things because I a: wasn't in the room b: am protecting co-workers c: don't know all the details So, keep that in mind going forward. Note to any of my Comixology co-workers: please feel free to jump in with your own thoughts, too add context, or to correct me if I get something wrong. Or just to say hi, because, y'know."

"So, Comixology and Kindle. We at Comixology had known for a while that we were going to have to move to Kindle. FYI, one of the words used for this move was migration. There were numerous reasons for this, one of which Todd Allen highlighted at The Beat:

""Incompatible tech stacks." (Todd/Heidi, if you see this, can someone @ me with Todd's twitter? Can't find it anywhere, and I want to credit where I can.) (Says the guy with an @ of cocktailsandink)"

I replied with a tag to @real_todd_allen – formerly of Bleeding Cool. He continued;

"This has been publicly mentioned a couple times over the last year or two, but Comixology's tech != Amazon's tech. It was a PROBLEM. So the solution devised several years ago (3? 4? I don't know anymore, time's a flat circle), was to move everything to Kindle and Amazon. After all, Amazon has a huge customer base. So, let's do this. We can tap into this huge audience and grow the market. So between some tech incompatibility (common with tech acquisitions, so I've heard) and the potential large audience, it made sense to move."

"Me, I wasn't paying too much attention to migration. I was in charge of the sales page and working with publishers on planning sales, and I had other stuff going on that kept me plenty busy. But really, it seemed like the right decision. When in doubt, swing big. *Insert Joker laugh here* I didn't start to hear any warnings until early 2021, I think? But it was still too far off in the distance for me to focus on."

"It was @ Aug '21, that David sent out a letter to the customers to let them know there was a change coming. It was also around this time that I started to hear MANY more red flags about the new store/apps. The kind that said, "oh sh-t, we might have a problem."  I wasn't involved in the coding or technical aspects of the new apps/store. I worked in Marketing, and wasn't too in the loop on most of migration. Post-migration, that changed because I kept opening my damn mouth. (long story for another time.) But the short-and-long of it was that by EOY 2021, some/all/few(?) CMX employees knew we were launching a subpar (I'm being polite) store/customer experience. And there was very little we could do to stop it, or make things better. That ship had sailed. It didn't help that we were blocked by, oh how do I put this, the completely sh-tty nature of Amazon's tools to do our jobs. I mean, square-peg-in-a-round-circle type-of sh-tty. In my opinion, of course."

"But before we get to that nightmare, let's take a step back. There's a significant issue, IMO, that affected migration, and It's not one that's gotten a lot of mention. If any of my co-workers want to chime in on this one, it'd be much appreciated. Let's talk about Covid.  I was a remote employee for my entire tenure at Comixology. There were a bunch of remote employees scatted across North America, but most of the company is/was based out of NYC. So when the pandemic hit, and everyone had to work from home? Things slowed down a "little".  For those of us who had plenty of remote experience, we mostly adapted okay. But we were the minority. All of a sudden my co-workers with kids were all, "hey sorry about the screaming" or co-workers with roommates were all "Sh-t, where are my headphones?" … and some Comixology employees were just plain 'ol "I need to be around people, this is f-cking horrible." And no one knew what was going on. 2020 was not a lot of fun, y'know? Employees GOT Covid. They GOT sick. It was not a pleasant time. I mean, I was safe up here in my hidey-hole in the wilds of Upstate NY. But for almost all the people I worked with, it was a completely different story. None of us had "the entire country works from home for a year or two" on our astrology charts, y'know?"

"So, work slowed, but, more importantly, so did _communication_. This is important. Covid made it difficult for Comixology employees to interact and do our jobs. It also made it harder for some of us to talk about or plan the move to Kindle. We just didn't have the time. As someone who never wants to work in an office again, even I can accept that communication is better in-person than over audio/video calls. So those red flags I mentioned earlier? They probably would've gotten caught – and shared – sooner if the pandemic hadn't hit. Could that have stopped and/or changed anything? I really don't know. But the pandemic made migration more difficult, IMO."

"So, February 2022 rolls around, we shut down our apps, turned off our website, and we move everything to Kindle. And y'know, when I look back to 12 months ago, it really WAS like Christmas. Everyone was happy and joyous and there was love and beauty throughout the world. Lol, no. It was f-cking horrible."

The next part is expected tomorrow. I have already asked a couple of questions which look like they will be answered then.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!