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At the start of the year, comiXology had recorded 50 million downloads. And in 9 months they’re barreling towards 100 million. That would be more than 5.5 million downloads a month. How does that compare to print? Paging John Jackson Miller!

“This has been a banner year for comiXology,” said co-founder and CEO David Steinberger in a statement. “We have dedicated ourselves to expanding the comic book audience by delivering the best consumer experience, and it’s fantastic to see that unfold. We started the year cresting 50 million downloads, two and a half years after launch; we added the next 50 million more than 3 times as fast. We are spreading the love of comics.”

“It’s dizzying to look back at the last 12 months and see that we’ve been the top grossing iPad app in the entire iTunes App Store almost 90% of all Wednesdays,” said co-founder John D. Roberts in his statement. “ComiXology’s mission is to bring comics to everyone everywhere and – looking at crossing this 100 million download milestone – it certainly feels like we are making good on that promise.”

To mark the milestone, they’ll be giving away a new free comic every day on comixology.com until the 100 millionth download.

Any way you look at it, that is a LOT of comics. We’ll be curious to hear Milton Griepp’s White Paper at the ICv2 conference to see the new figure he’ll give for the digital comics business.

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11 COMMENTS

  1. For comparison: iTunes
    100 million songs
    April 28, 2003 – July 11, 2004

    Comics by comiXology launched in July 2009, April 2010 on the iPad, then the internet in June. So a bit longer, but it’s comics, not music. Apple also promoted iTunes with a Mountain Dew bottle cap promotion: 1 in 6 won a free download, which encouraged people to try the service for free.

    Will they announce the 100 millionth download or customer?

    Hey, while we’ve got the call out to Mr. Miller, how many paper comics are sold a year?

  3. I have 122 titles in my account and I’d 75% of them are paid. This is just counting titles, not individual issues within. Comixology has been my main supplier of comics since February of this year.

  4. I agree that we’ll need to see how many of the downloads were paid before a judgment can be made about how digital comics are doing. I’d also like to see stats on what percentage of those downloads were for big publisher back catalog items and what percentage were for independents.

  5. I appreciate and agree with the interest in how many of these were paid instead of free downloads. I have to say, though, that I started out sampling free comics on Comixology but have moved on to regularly buying stuff there. In that sense, the free comics did their job. The catch is that I only buy stuff at $.99 (or under $5 for collected editions), whether it’s Monkeybrain stuff, DC Digital First content, or the sale books (currently IDW’s DOCTOR WHO series). That’s the *right* price point as far as I’m concerned, and I still find plenty to buy/read.

  6. I just looked at my Comixology account, and out of the 120 books I’ve downloaded, I’ve paid for maybe a dozen. Mostly I use the apps for the free books available, sometimes buying a 99 cent comic to try out a series.

  7. Until I can own the actual comic book file and am able to view it on any number of platforms I plan to sit out on digital. Glad to see that it is growing though

  8. Yeah, numbers like that aren’t worth much if they aren’t defined. In addition to the paid/unpaid ratio (I don’t know if I’m atypical, but my paid books are only about 10% of my my total), I also wonder about the literally millions of comics with “free digital codes” that Marvel has sold this year. Are those included in the total, and if so, what’s included? The number of codes in books shipped to retailers, or only the codes actually redeemed by the reader?

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