The Incredible (Maybe) Shrinking Collection: Graphic.ly Sells To Blurb, May Close Down Servers

So a couple years ago, we reported that Graphic.ly, one of the early digital comics retailers, was shutting down its retail store and closing up its app to new customers. And at the time, we worried, even though Graphic.ly had announced that you could still get your books through their app (provided you already had it, since the instant they announced the closing of their digital retail store, they pulled their app off of Apple and Android), that the day would come when Graphic.ly shut down their servers and you might lose access to the books that you paid for.

But hey, that all happened two years ago! Nothing could possibly change the status quo for the books you bought, right?

Right?

Blurb, which lets authors self-publish and print their books, is buying Graphicly, a platform that lets authors publish and distribute e-books, with a specific focus on image-heavy content like comics and photography…

This is an acquihire [sp], with the six employees who formed Graphicly joining Blurb. As part of that process, Graphicly will be shutting down in the next 30 days.

Dammit.

So what happens if you still have books that you published floating around on Graphic.ly’s servers?

Over the next thirty days, we will keep Graphicly up and running so you can go in and download your books. There is a handy “Download All” button to make it easy. After thirty days, we will completely delete all data, including all accounts and books.

We will be bringing down books in the various marketplaces, and have worked with the marketplaces to make the transition as simple as possible.

Once you download your books, you can make accounts at the various ebook stores and upload your books there.

And after that, there is a list of various places like Amazon and iTunes where you can upload your books if you’re a publisher… but there’s not a lot of news as to what to do if you’re a simple reader with comics you bought still on the Graphic.ly platform. I suppose it’s possible that books will still be readable on the old Graphic.ly app (assuming they still are; we never had the app, and once the retail store went down more than two years ago, we were never able to get one)… and maybe I’m a Chinese jet pilot.

Look, there are two important things to take from this story, the first being that, if you still have any books on the Graphic.ly platform, you should check out your options for getting those comics in a format that you can keep.

And the second being: if you are buying digital comics from any retailer, you need to be aware that those books might only be available for exactly as long as it is cost-effective for that retailer to maintain the servers providing you access to those books. By now we’ve learned that even the biggest digital comics retailer isn’t immune to being bought out by a larger entity who might or might not have the end user’s better interests at heart.

Or – and this is just an idea – you can go to a place like my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me not to show the paying clientele my “server load,” and buy some paper comic books. Sure, the storage can be a nightmare, but if your local store sells out to Barnes & Noble or something, you still have something for your hard-earned dollar.

Once again: caveat emptor.