ComiXology has announced DRM-Free backups for selected titles
Comic-Con every year has big announcements about movies, tv show, but lets not forget what's in the name. Comixology doesn't seem to have forgotten because every year they have something to say about the digital comic company.
Comixology has announced that starting today on selected titles, you can now download your purchased comic with no digital rights management (DRM) attached to your file. The first wave of publishers participating are Image Comics, Dynamite Entertainment, Zenescope Entertainment, MonkeyBrain Comics, Thrillbent, and Top Shelf Productions. Creators and publishers that are self-publishing through comiXology submit are also able to choose to make their books available with a DRM-free backup. I also noticed that not all comics under a publisher are able to be backup at this time. For example, Zenescope's Grimm series isn't while their Escape From Wonderland series is selected. Some of the notable missing publishers are DC Comics, Marvel, and IDW. You'll be able to download either high definition PDF or CBZ formats to your local drive. Guided View reading experience not included.
This was all revealed during their panel at Comic-Con today.
“We’re excited to make this DRM-free backup option available to our customers and publishers today. Our customers can keep a copy locally and continue to do their reading on comiXology in our industry-changing Guided View.”
“For those out there who have not joined the comic reading community because of DRM – you have no excuse now. We’re excited about the launch of DRM-free backups today and look forward to announcing more innovative features as we move ahead with our mission of making everyone on the face of the planet a comic book fan!”
How do you know if the comic you're about to buy is downloadable? Here is the selection of DRM-free titles. When you go to purchase a title, before clicking "Buy Book", you will now see along with the age icon, whether or not it is available in HD, the download icon if available.
Once you have purchased your comic, how do you actually download one? There are three ways to accomplish this. If the individual book is part of your collection, select the format you prefer under the "Read Book" button to start your download. To see all of your DRM-free books, go to the “My Books” section of Comixology.com on your desktop computers and click the button labled "My Backups". From your backups page you can sort by book title, last downloaded date, purchase date, show all, never backed up, and backed up. You can also download while in your recently purchased area if backups are available for that title.
Its only been a couple of month since Amazon purchased ComiXology. Whether or not they had anything to do with this decision isn't clear, but this is definitely a nice feature for comic book fans. It will also be interesting to see if or ever DC, Marvel and IDW join the party.
sources: ComiXology Tumblr
ComiXology.com/drm-free-backup
