Diamond Comic Distributors Gives Up On Digital

Even the company with a stranglehold on the distribution of physical comics couldn’t figure out how to make digital comics a profitable venture.

As reported by Hollywood Reporter, Diamond Comic Distributors will shut down Diamond Digital at the end of the month, exiting the digital comics business after less than two years. Diamond Digital helped comic book stores set up their own virtual storefronts, supposedly allowing the brick and mortar retailers to benefit from digital sales.

Obviously, it didn’t work as planned. Rich Johnston broke down some of the reasons why at Bleeding Cool, though the biggest ones are pretty apparent: no DC or Marvel comics (or Dark Horse, for that matter) and incompatibility with ComiXology.

Though I find anecdotally that interest in digital comics is very real, the demise of Diamond Direct is just the latest example of why they don’t work under the current model. There needs to be a universal standard for the comics and something done about the DRM issue to appease those who are (rightfully) concerned that the books they’ve paid for will disappear if the entity serving them goes away.

Those issues should get worked out eventually, but Diamond Digital won’t be playing a part in the solutions.

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