ComiXology, the digital comics distribution platform and Amazon subsidiary, announced yesterday that it reached an agreement to add Drawn & Quarterly, a premier publisher of literary graphic novels, to its catalog. D&Q, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, publishes award-winning and critically acclaimed graphic fiction by creators including Lynda Barry, Chester Brown, Gilbert Hernandez and Rotu Madan among others. According to ComiXology, the titles are available on both ComiXology and Amazon’s Kindle platform.
ComiXology, which already has a dominant position in the $100M digital comics market in large part due to its exclusive distribution deal with Marvel, has been expanding in all directions lately. The company is heavily promoting its new catalog of French bande designée titles in translation from leading European publisher Delcourt, as well as independent work published through its creator-driven Comixology Submit program.
In the past, the company has stated its goal is to broaden the overall readership for comics and graphic literature beyond the “direct market” (comic shop) audience for the superhero and fantasy genre work that accounts for the lion’s share of the current market in North America.
Drawn and Quarterly, along with other more literary-oriented publishers Fantagraphics, Top Shelf, Abrams ComicArts and Scholastic (all already on Amazon/ComiXology), publishes graphic work in genres more generally considered “mainstream” in the literary world, including memoir, character-based fiction, magical realism, reportage and non-fiction essays.
