A Sweet new deal: Developers behind ‘Software for Comic Folk’ talk products, commerce, and collaboration

When is something too good to be true, and as a comics fan, can I truly tell the difference?

That’s generally how I felt when I first started hearing about a company called Sweet across social media. The creator of so-called “Software for Comic Folk” have made some rather lofty promises to both creators, publishers, fans, and retailers alike. Admittedly, there are solid plans in place for a suite of products that could revolutionize and streamline how we sell and promote comics. But plenty of folks have made similar promises only to break our hearts (coughComixologycough). Could Sweet be the true difference-maker? Are they the ones who can truly, as they’ve claimed, “make everything less shitty for everyone in comics”?

Turns out, the reality might be even sweeter than any other promises made so far.

The Right Kinda Origins

If you’re going to believe anyone in comics, they have to have the right pedigree. And co-founder and software engineer Kenny Meyers has that in spades.

“I was a kid in the ’90s. Obviously Jim Lee and Chris Claremont’s X-Men; Spawn; the birth of Image [Comics] – I was on board,” Meyers said during a recent Zoom call. “Then I stopped reading because I didn’t think comics were cool because that was the consensus at the time. How wrong that was. Then, when the iPad got released essentially, I was back. Like, now I don’t have to contain them anywhere and I just started reading again.”

But like many of us, Meyers was a “devout reader until Comixology was sold to Amazon.” Unlike others, though, when the great nerdy hope eventually fumbled the ball, he could actually do something about it.

“[Comixology] just clearly just shit the bucket,” Meyers said. “And a lot of what informs what I want to do is (very selfishly and vainly I might add) like, ‘This feels like something that could just be better.’ Like, ‘This was a lost opportunity by a mile.’ What if we can build a comic store to rival Kindle at this point, which is by nature hubristic.”

So, a few years back, Meyers and some cohorts got together to put those lofty ideas into action. What they came up with was Omnibus, an online marketplace that streamlined the buying experience. The platform got some sizable media attention, and even landed big publishers like Image Comics. But pretty quickly, the landscape changed.

“That was one of the first calls we had and [Image] were like, ‘Yeah, we’ll do it for this and that,” Meyers said. “We foolishly thought we could do this, but unfortunately that didn’t quite work out.”

Meyers ultimately blames Omnibus’ demise on a “failure of partnership,” adding, “It just wasn’t clicking like it should have been. You can’t build a business on that foundation.” And while he’d mostly been responsible for the back-end, there were also financial issues involved.

“They said it’s just too expensive, but I wasn’t a part of that decision,” Meyers said. “I tried, when I heard it was closing, to get it back to keep it going because I think it’s feasible in this market to keep that store running. Also, I’m a software engineer, so I can keep these things running to a certain degree.”

Meyers added, “So I didn’t agree with it closing, and I wouldn’t have closed it. But unfortunately, at that point, the decision was taken out of my hands due to the decision…that we took on some venture capitalists and they essentially guided everything.”

Fortunately, the experience didn’t leave an entirely bad taste in Meyers’ mouth, and he later joined up with other co-founders (Ben Carr and Matt Anderson) to try again with a digitally-oriented marketplace for comics (and so much more still).

“The [comics] community, as you well know, is exceptional,” Meyers said. “It’s very tight-knit, and that’s problematic sometimes. But it is very lovely and very inviting. And I just like latched onto it building Omnibus. And I was like, ‘I want to keep working in this space.’ And so that’s how Sweet was born.”

Make It Sparkle

It’s not all been gumdrops and candy canes for the Sweet team. Meyers said that starting up again meant “new problems entirely.” At the same time, the team’s now able to say “we could have done this earlier and solved this piece.” For instance, maybe some offerings to entice readers and consumers?

“One of the biggest and simplest things (and it’s so dumb), but someone was like, ‘Why aren’t there any free comics in the store so I could check it out?’ I was like, ‘Oh yeah, we didn’t think about that [during Omnibus],'” Meyers said. “Obviously with Sweet Shop, all the free comics are going to be front and center.”

But it’s not just added goodies that make Sweet a change of pace. As they learned from their dealings with the likes of Image, success is ultimately about who you know and who can help you grow.

“Comics is a relationship-based business, and you have to build those relationships with publishers to get the content you need,” Meters said. “So it’s enough to show you customized stuff from some random user from the internet. Truthfully, going publisher first, it’s a lot of negotiations and a lot of relationships.”

Still, it’s not just about getting out in front of the right people. Even a random idiot can make themselves known at the front door of major comics publishers.

“The biggest thing you have to understand is all publishers are getting, like, 10 digital shops pitching them every few months,” Meyers said. “Like, these startups are just college kids, or even people my age, who are just like, ‘Hey, we got this great idea. Will you let us sell your comics?’ And so they are inundated with trying to filter out which one is the right one, which one is the one that seems like it has teeth.”

So, what exactly gives Sweet “the teeth,” as it were? Knowing what they’re talking about, of course, and being able to prove it.

“I remember one conversation, and this was actually at Omnibus, where we had just had enough publisher conversations where we had named the split and the terms and they’re like, ‘Oh, you’ve obviously done this before,'” Meyers said. “And that was enough.”

At the same time, Meyers admits that “there’s also some magic to it,” and working with publishers and other stakeholders can often be a crapshoot.

“I don’t know what hits publishers on certain days,” Meyers said. “It could be that Kindle was mean to them in the morning. So they’re like, ‘Fuck Amazon.’ It is a constant mystery. Having more publishers and bigger name publishers helps. And there’s a lot of FOMO, too. It’s a fun problem to solve.”

A Bold New Line, Part I

And solving problems is exactly what Sweet might have accomplished with their three products. (Meyers said there was originally four products, but one was “rolled into other things,” and the remainders will be their focus going forward.)

The first is Bindings, which Meyers described as “our comics Linktree.” He went on to explain that this product is geared toward solving a rather specific problem.

“It was the first product, and I built it around what I call the Scott Snyder problem,” Meyers said. “Which is that Scott Snyder signs up for everything. If I want to buy all of his work, I don’t know where to go. And in many cases, you need to go multiple places. He has Comixology exclusives and DSTLRY exclusives.”

So Bindings is, according to Meyers, “all the things that creators need to do – plus people can read and preview their comics and figure out where to buy them.” Not only that, but creators can customize the format of what they actually share, and even provide links to newsletter sign-ups, promote various Kickstarter campaigns and Patreons, and disseminate vital info like FOCS, among other important functions.

“Essentially, it can become a replacement for people’s Linktree and/or website – to show off what they need to show with the most minimal amount of effort,” Meyers said. “We’ve tried to make things pretty easy to use. I couldn’t call it like our secret sauce, but if you wanted to, I would not at all be offended by that notion.”

Given its significance, Meyers went on to call Bindings “their lab…for experimentation.” And the experimentation is set to continue, as Sweet already has “some features that we’ll be working on next year for creators.”

A Bold New Line, Part II

From Bindings, there’s Find Your Comic Store. If that sounds a little familiar, that’s sort of the point.

“Find Your Comic Store is a replacement for Comic Shop Locator,” Meyers said. “Its mission is to connect us to retailers, but also I just really fucking hate Comic Shop Locator as a website. It’s a lot of work. I respect its purpose, and I’m not shitting on all that’s involved there, but Diamond’s gone. And so it felt like we could make stores easier to find and represent.”

Meyers said that FYCS allows retailers to “put their photos up [similarly] to how you would a profile on [Meta for Business] to show their personality. It also works worldwide, which is really important; Comic Shop Locator does not.” There’s already a “review queue that we constantly update with what people can add to their stores if they’re missing. It’s very community-driven in that regard.”

But it’s not just about replacing Comic Shop Locator (even if it is sorta is the point). Rather, it’s about striking back at a marketplace that’s not really suited to best help comics retailers.

“Obviously Google exists. We don’t have those resources like Google Maps,” Meyers said. “But we’ve looked, and sometimes their data is pretty inaccurate about what is a comic store. There’s a great shop called Coffee and Comics; they’re categorized as a coffee shop. So there’s weird nuances like that.”

These shops, Meyers argued, shouldn’t be made to suffer because of their increasing need to overhaul their business model and get a little creative in the name of ever-shifting market preferences.

“It’s hard because those businesses have to just diversify what they’re doing just by the nature of the product they’re selling,” Meyers said. “Like, it makes sense to have Pokemon cards everywhere. They’re geek-adjacent to everything.”

So, to really make a difference, Sweet are leaning into the community-centric function that Meyers mentioned. And it’s already been working like gangbusters.

“You can go in and edit and tell us things are closed,” Meyers said. “We’ll get someone who will just clean house in a neighborhood in a city. Like, ‘This is open in Austin. This is closed.’ We got some in France and Kiev – even in a warzone country someone was like, ‘Oh, this comic shop’s closed. You’re missing this one.'”

A Bold New Line, Part III

And the last piece of Sweet’s puzzle is their semi-titular namesake, Sweet Shop. Featuring “in-app purchases, wishlists, reviews, day & date releases, offline reading, and more,” Sweet Shop is, in many ways, the tip of the company’s spear. It may not be as flashy as Bindings, or as innately useful as FYCS, but in this day and age, we need more of a reliable online comics shopping experience.

That idea, of course, got us talking about arguably this year’s biggest news in comics, Diamond’s bankruptcy. While Sweet wasn’t directly affected by the move, it’s still very much a sore spot for Meyers.

“I feel incredibly bad for the publishers who have been fucked by Diamond,” Meyers said. “Some of whom I have good relationships with. That makes me angry. In particular, publishers who I think are good actors, and essentially Diamond stole their stuff.” Meyers also noted that he had “friends who were going to be a part of Sweet Shop and have had to back out because they don’t know if they can continue.”

If there’s one upside to the Diamond “situation,” it’s that Meyers thinks many retailers have “actually done OK in that more competition is generally good,” adding, “I’m not surprised that retailers and everyone has figured out a way because comics are so resilient and it’s a credit to everyone working in them.”

But, as he’d mentioned, sometimes these seismic shifts/changes can be important from time to time, even if they are scary and somewhat harmful.

“Obviously having different publishers go to different places makes things more complicated for what they’re trying to sell,” Meyers said. “My whole take on that issue is there’s clearly a lot of change going on in comics right now, even in the digital space, and it’s probably good for comics.”

Meyers added, “I feel bad for the people, but what’s next? Like what, where do we go from here? Because it’s not this death nail to the industry that I think maybe some people have. I like watching everyone’s resiliency; it’s pretty phenomenal.”

Kick Rocks, AI

And speaking of seismic shifts to the industry, we also got on the subject of AI.

Meyers is quick to clarify that Sweet’s back-end does involve some rather basic use of AI.

“We use it to analyze a page of artwork for panel point coordinates,” Meyers said. “It’s really bad at it, but it helps with the speed. This existed before ChatGPT.” I made a reference to Dum-E and U from the Iron Man movies, and Meyers responded that even those machines are “smarter than what we’re doing here.”

Beyond that, however, and AI has nothing to do with how Sweet actually operates.

“AI doesn’t touch the artwork,” Meyers said. “We don’t accept AI artwork from anyone on any platform. We won’t publish books on our platform for AI. Why are we having computers make art when we can make art? That’s one of the reasons we invented computers – so we’d have more time to make art. I would rather have AI doing my laundry than making manga.”

Still, that doesn’t mean AI couldn’t someday make its way into the fold. However, it wouldn’t be at the first chose of any of the Sweet staff/owners.

“If the sea change happens, and all of a sudden everyone in comics is creating AI books, we will be the reluctant people, the last people on the ship to jump on board because ultimately our goal is more comics in the world,” Meyers said.

Regardless of what happens, Sweet is always going to operate in full alignment with creators across comics.

“We work with creators all the time: Their work was stolen by large companies,” Meyers said. “AI works are also non-copyrightable, I think quite correctly. I’m sure that will change in time, given the way things are going, unfortunately. But for us, it’s just about respecting the people on our platform who work their asses off to make art and to make books.”

The Rise of Real Books

Because even as they see themselves as disrupting comics (albeit in a good way), the whole Sweet team don’t exactly want to compete with anyone in comics.

“I mean, just look at the resurrection of Barnes & Noble; people like having books,” Meyers said. “I want more comic stores in the world. I don’t want to be a single entity, but the truth of the matter is not everyone can have a comic store. And every comic store has limited inventory. Plus, they’re sculpted to the personality and the pitch of what the person is selling. We’re willing to be the back of the house and share that revenue. We view ourselves as supplements.”

As “supplements,” Sweet hopes their entire product line can benefit comics retailers in ways they might have never deemed possible.

“We don’t want them to lose that customer, and we want comic stores to grow,” Meyers said. “We’d love to like be enough passive income for them to like hire help so they can take a Saturday off or something like that.”

So, how have retailers reacted to this approach so far, even as the Sweet line-up is very much still in its early days? Good enough, yeah.

“I’ve had mixed reactions,” Meyers said. “Everyone’s skeptical of digital stores because they don’t stick around and they’ve had the rug pulled on them many, many times. I’ve been talking with retailers, trying to go one-on-one with all of them over time, to figure out what works for them and what doesn’t work for them. Like, what do you need? What’s the least amount of work I can make for you to do because they have enough to do.”

To help with that process, Meyers and company recognize what they can and can’t do with Sweet, and they try to operate accordingly.

“I think everyone really likes an affiliate program because bookshop.org is…we’re not a nonprofit and our percentages are different because of the app store stuff that we have,” Meyers said. “But as a model, I think it’s pretty awesome. Although we won’t be doing custom stores for people anytime soon. But I think the philosophy of it follows our philosophy. In that it’s much cooler if comic stores can share in this stuff.”

They even readily accept most feedback (no matter how harsh it might sound). It’s about trying to do their best given what’s available within the larger marketplace.

“Everyone likes Find Your Comic Store,” Meyers said. “Some people complain about the data, which is fair. They all have different challenges, and I am trying to, again, balance annoying the shit out of everyone with questions. But the fact that a lot of them are, again, feast or famine – some publisher like Marvel makes an editorial decision and sales are down. I just try to approach cautiously. They’ve all been lovely with their time as people.”

A Taste of What’s to Come

Sweet is, as mentioned, still getting started. Meyers said they hope to launch an “invite-only beta in the next few weeks [for Sweet Shop]. I want to say on both Android and iOS.” They also haven’t debuted their full publisher list, but Image Comics will “definitely be day one.” (Sweet also made new publisher announcements as part of NYCC 2025.)

From there, though, it’ll be the whole slow and steady approach.

“And then we’ll scale out from there, like a normal beta as we have people battle-test the apps,” Meyers said. “And then we’ll hopefully have the website. We’re willing to play. We’re willing to move dates around. We’re very noncommittal. We have a lot of publishers signed up for Sweet Shop. I’m really excited about that. So you’ll probably be hearing more about that soon.”

There’ll be other updates, changes, etc. as well. (Meyers said they may add “more local event stuff, like Local Comic Shop Day or Free Comic Book Day, supporting all the stuff that retailers do on the site.”) It’s always going to be about “integrating way deeper into all of the cool things retailers are doing because it’s just fun.”

And Meyers is the very first to admit that it’s “ridiculous” to think of a tech company being all about fun. (Especially when so many other such enterprises have made similar claims only to help usher in our current techno-dystopia.) However, Sweet seek to remain wholly transparent with their hopes and schemes to innovate within the comics space. And after so many past letdowns and disappointments, even the possibility of a happy ending seems worthy of even a measured celebration.

“Everyone thinks that there has to be motives because we are, to a degree, a tech company,” Meyers said. “But, unfortunately, one of our motives is just fun. It sounds very altruistic. It’s still rooted in capitalism. We’re still making money. I don’t want to sell it as something that it isn’t, but it feels like a reasonable partnership.”

For more on Sweet, and any future updates, stay tuned to their official website.