It’s been an…interesting year for digital comics. While Comixology has essentially merged with Amazon’s Kindle books, there are several not-Comixology digital comics services that remain as alternatives for various
One of them, GlobalComix, released a pre-Black Friday sale and update that we missed due to holiday travel and what not (which is too bad because they had a pretty good $39.99 for a whole year sale) but there there were also positive tidings enclosed:
GlobalComix first announced an all-time high enrollment in summer 2022. Since then, the library nearly doubled from 12.5k to 22.7k published books with a growth projection of another 40-50% by the end of the year. Additionally they’ve seen a 4x the growth in monthly readership, uploads, and content owners. There has been a jump from 110 publishers to over 180, and 75k+ pages uploaded monthly. Signup conversion rates have improved by over 500%, including an increase in comments, likes, reactions, and follows on social media.
Other key metrics include rolling annual unique searches up to 1.2 million! As mentioned during spooky season, 10% of the content library consisted of horror titles, both from indie and publisher, with a strong mix of action, adventure, drama, comedy, fantasy, horror, science fiction, and many other genres and themes. PDF sales were quick to match subscription and donation revenue.
“We are so thrilled to see continued adoption of GlobalComix within the indie creator community,” said Christopher Carter, CEO and Founder of GlobalComix. “This has truly been a transformative year for us, from PDF sales and downloads to our print-on-demand announcement, and the community has embraced us every step of the way. We’re incredibly thankful for the support the creator and publisher community has shown, and we can’t wait to explore what’s next as we head into 2023.”
“I’m not just proud of the growth we’ve seen in such a short amount of time, but of the quality of the relationships we’ve been able to build with our partners,” said Eric Tapper, Head of Business Development for GlobalComix. “We’ve recognized from the beginning that the comics industry is a place where any kind of progress is hard won, and our people-first approach continues to pay dividends at an increasing rate. Our current and upcoming partnerships will help us create the collaborative and growth-minded atmosphere that makes GlobalComix the premiere destination for the comics community. I look forward to how we’ll all evolve and share in the most connected experience of immersive storytelling in comics.”
As they’ve done before, GlobalComix also supplied some charts showing seemingly robust growth – but note these charts don’t include a y-axis index so there isn’t any real data here. However, we do like charts and graphs…and who knows, maybe someday we’ll have more transparency on some of this. At any rate, with the growth of content on the platform, it makes sense that readership will grow as well.
GlobalComix offers the chance for creators to upload their own creator-owned books (kind of like the gone but not forgotten Comixology Submit) and thus far it seems to be well received.
Monthly Page Reads
New Verified Accounts
Monthly Active Accounts 
New Creator Accounts
Revenue
As you can see, usage is growing. While becoming a real competitor to Comixology/Kindle is an uphill battle, it’s good to have an alternative that is still dedicated to comics, and more platforms mean more potential revenue channels for creators.
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