ComiXology adds continuous bookmarking to all its digital comics apps (scoop)

If you read digital comics, the chances are pretty great that you prefer to do so on a particular device. For me its the iPad, and I rarely bother with anything else, even if I want to. But with the latest update to the ComiXology platform, that may change.

The digital comic book startup is rolling out a new feature, called Continue, that will remember the place you left off when reading a comic, and allow you to pick back up in the same spot on another device. This is probably not too big of a deal for the regular 22-page comic, but it could be very useful for graphic novels.

Personally, the Continue feature would mean I’d actually start reading comics on my iPhone again, because it changes the whole process. To read a comic on my phone that I started on my iPad meant that I had to re-download the book to my device again, and sift through the pages until I found my place. And if I’m reading comics on my phone, it means I have a limited amount of time that I don’t want to spend staring at a download and re-reading pages.

It’s true that the continuous bookmarking may seem like a small feature, but its little elements like this that make ComiXology’s reading experience better than its competitors. (Seriously, reading a comic on iBooks or Kindle feels so rigid by comparison because it lacks things like the panel-by-panel Guided View feature.) Hopefully, we’ll see more little additions in the future, such as annotations, and being able to view comics without having to download them.

The Continue feature is available today across ComiXology app on all platforms (Windows 8, iOS, Android, Kindle Fire, etc.). I’m unsure if it will also be available within comic book publisher apps that are powered by ComiXology, such as Marvel, Image, DC comics, and IDW. The company has also added more social features to its apps that let you share something on Facebook and Twitter in the middle of a book.