ComiXology Submit: Final Sales Numbers (2013-2021)
A decade late, here are the final sales numbers from my ComiXology Submit experiment: 5,699 copies, $443 earned, and why I'd never do it again. (aside from the fact that it's been discontinued)
A Patreon supporter recently mentioned they discovered my work through ComiXology back in the day and it led me to an old post on my blog from 2014 where I was so excited about the platform.
My, how times have changed.
ComiXology Submit was the self-publishing platform for ComiXology, the leading digital comics storefront at the time—a way for independent creators to get their work directly to readers who were already there buying comics, and a cautionary tale about what happens when you build your audience on someone else's platform.
Anyway, it's kinda ridiculous, but at the end of that post I mentioned that I'd keep folks updated with how sales go. And while I did post one update, I didn't follow up again for...well... a decade.
So, ComiXology Submit shut down in 2022. Probably three people care about this ancient platform, but but apparently I can't let a decade-old promise to internet strangers go unfulfilled.
Below is the new bit I just added to that old 2014 post.
UPDATE: January 2026
I just rediscovered this post after a Patreon subscriber mentioned that ComiXology was how they found my work all those years ago. So, as promised a decade ago, here's how it all played out for The Chairs' Hiatus.
Final numbers (2013-2021):
- 5,699 copies sold
- $443 earned (50% revenue share)
Reached readers in 33 countries
The March 2014 "Submit Starter Pack bundle" accounts for that massive spike—5,448 copies at $0.09 each. After the bundle, sales dropped to near zero (just 4 copies in all of 2015), then slowly picked back up to 58 copies in 2017 before trailing off again through 2020.
I later added the six issues of Incredible Doom to the platform starting in 2018, which sold an additional 535 copies before ComiXology Submit shut down in 2022 when Amazon integrated everything into Kindle Direct Publishing and I removed everything from the platform.
Would I do it today?
Nope.
My impression is that in 2013, ComiXology was still run by people who cared about comics. By the time Amazon fully absorbed it, the platform had been through what Cory Doctorow calls "enshittification"—that predictable cycle where platforms start by being good to users, then abuse users to court business customers, then finally abuse everyone to maximize profit extraction.
Amazon spent years degrading the ComiXology experience: killing the standalone app, removing features readers loved, worsening the reading interface, cutting creator revenue splits, and eventually shuttering Submit entirely.
And I, for one, I'm tired of building on platforms designed to squeeze both creators and readers into the worst possible position we'll tolerate.
If you want the full archaeological dive into dead digital comics platforms—complete with charts, revenue comparisons, and my rant about why I'd never do it again—read the complete updated 2014 post here or just jump to the new bit.
Thanks for indulging this extremely niche bookkeeping exercise.
If you found this sales autopsy useful, you'll love what I share on Patreon: detailed post-mortems, publisher pitch documents, and all the unglamorous business lessons I've learned. It's the deep-dive creator business content behind the scenes.
