For the third year running, digital comics platform ComiXology closed out 2013 as the most profitable non-game App on iPad. It's testament to ComiXology's digital dominance; in the last seven years, they've grown from a comics discussion and cataloging site to the face of digital comics publishing, with over 45,000 comics available from more than 75 publishers. Since the 2009 launch of their digital comics reader and store on desktop and iOS, they've sold over 6 billion pages of comics, 4 billion of those in the last year. ComiXology CEO David Steinberger attributes that growth not just to the migration of existing comics fans from print, but entirely new fans discovering the medium online.

"We're finding that a larger and larger percentage of our user base – our new user base – is people who are buying comics for the very first time with us," Steinberger told WIRED. Those customers are then finding their way into comics shops: Of the 20 percent of ComiXology customers who bought their first comics online in the last quarter 2013, 64 percent have begun buying print comics as well.

Some of that's likely a matter of convenience. ComiXology offers instant access to digital versions of comic book titles, without the inconvenience of a trip to your local comics shop. The app's digital interface, first developed to translate traditional comics to the small screens of handheld devices, may also be a factor in the platform's appeal to newcomers. In addition to formatting comics for a smaller screen, the app's guided-view technology automatically shifts from panel to panel as you tap, which can help new readers navigate the sometimes forbidding visual lexicon of a new medium.

The digital sale of comics is also bringing a striking number of women into the fold. While the majority of ComiXology users remain male, in the third quarter of 2013, 20 percent of ComiXology's new customers were women – up from about five percent at launch. Female users also skew younger than male, according to data provided by ComiXology.

Steinberger suspects the shift to a newer and more diverse readership is due in part to the breadth of content ComiXology offers, which contains a wider range of material than most comics shops. The company is now publishing original work as well through the recently introduced Submit, a portal that allows independent comics creators a direct means to sell their work on the platform.

What's still missing from the service, Steinberger admits, is curation – the kind of personal recommendations and introductions to the sometimes complex shared-universe series you might get from the staff a local comics shop. It'll become an increasingly critical issue as the sheer volume of material on ComiXology becomes even more difficult to navigate and self-curate, particularly as the publisher bolsters its backlist with more older comics that are currently accessible – legally at least – only in print.

Correction 12:15 PST 01/15/14: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that ComiXology plans to publish print versions of some content.