Tech giant Amazon announced 16,000 layoffs yesterday, and we’re hearing that most of the remaining Comixology staff may have been among them.
While we have no official confirmation from Amazon, we’re told that the remaining US staff was either immediately terminated or given until April as an end date.
While it doesn’t talk about it much, Amazon still sells digital comics day and date from almost every major publisher. Converting the comics files to “Guided View” (automated transitions that make paneling clearer) and a digital format had been offshored at the company since the last round of layoffs in early 2023, which I compared to a “bloodbath.” Although the company was drastically downsized at that time, it did continue on, notably with the Comixology Originals line of creator owned comics. Comixology Originals has been putting out both graphic novels and periodical format comics regularly even since the last round of layoffs, under GM and CTO Jeff DiBartolomeo. It offers both decent page rates and total creative ownership – a rarity in the comics industry.
Comixology was co founded by David Steinberger, John Roberts, and Peter Jaffe back in 2007 and outlasted other digital comics start-ups to become the biggest and most trusted platform. The company was bought by Amazon in 2014 for an undisclosed price and continued to run as a stand along business unit until 2021, when it was announced it would be folding more into Kindle. That led to the Comixology app being shut down entirely and merged with Kindle in late 2023. All of these moves were accompanied by layoffs and, even more importantly, complaints from readers that Comixology’s bespoke architecture – built for the quirks of periodical comics – was becoming more and more buggy and less and less useful as it was transferred to Kindle.
Amazon has announced 30,000 layoffs over the last few months – only a tiny portion of their 1.58 million employees, but nearly 10% of its corporate workforce. According to a memo to employees:
The job cuts were necessary to strengthen the company by “reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy” at Amazon, its top human resources executive, Beth Galetti, said in a post.
Galetti left open the possibility of further reductions, saying some teams will continue to “make adjustments as appropriate.”
Amazon also announced that the layoffs were made possible by the use of AI, as CEO Andy Jassy is all in on the technology:
Jassy has been outspoken about AI’s impact on Amazon. Last year, he wrote in a blog post to employees that efficiency gains from the technology would allow the company to reduce its workforce.
“As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,” he bluntly admitted.
Jassy said Amazon wasn’t unique in that respect: He envisioned billions of AI agents being put into service across every company and field.
I’m not quite certain whether AI can do Guided View conversion….but I’m pretty sure that if it tried, it would be crappy.
Although I’ve used the term Comixology above, note that it is only a landing page and a brand name these days: digital comics at Amazon have been absorbed into the Kindle architecture for quite some time.
What will become of this brand and landing page – and Comixology Originals – isn’t clear. We’ll report any updates as they emerge.
