Hadlee Simons / Android Authority
Amazon’s Kindle is the most popular e-book store offering a variety of e-books for purchase as well as the Kindle Unlimited subscription. The company also offers Kindle apps on a variety of platforms, including Android.
However, it emerged almost a month ago that Amazon would turn off book purchases via the Kindle app for Android. Now it looks like the time has come, so what does that mean?
Can you buy Kindle books from Android?
You used to be able to buy eBooks via the Kindle app for Android using Amazon’s “one-click” purchase method to purchase them seamlessly. You can also subscribe to the Kindle Unlimited plan through the app. All this is changing from today (June 1, 2022).
“To remain consistent with updated Google Play Store policies, the ability to purchase or rent Kindle books or subscribe to Kindle Unlimited will no longer be available in the Kindle app for Android with the release of app version 8.58,” read an excerpt of an email sent to users of the Kindle app for Android.
Why can I not buy books or subscribe via the app?
Hadlee Simons / Android Authority
The changes come after Google issued a new billing policy for Play Store apps, forcing apps to use Google Play billing for purchases or be removed from the storefront.
Google Play billing means the search giant would get a cut on any purchases. Amazon probably feels that no purchase in the app is better than Google getting a share of the revenue.
However, eBooks is not the only Amazon service affected by the billing policy. Amazon Music and Audible purchases were also turned off in their respective Android apps.
How can I still get Kindle Books on Android?
Hadlee Simons / Android Authority
The company explained via its email to users that there are three alternative ways to get new books:
- Visit amazon.com/ebooks in your device’s browser and purchase them here.
- Add books to your Amazon wishlist via the app, then visit amazon.com/wishlist via your browser to purchase these books.
- Use the Kindle Unlimited subscription service to download a variety of books.
It is worth repeating that the third option requires that you are already a Kindle Unlimited subscriber, as you will not be able to subscribe to the service through the Android Kindle app due to these changes. So you must first subscribe to Kindle Unlimited via your phone / tablet / PC browser if you are not a member.
There is also another potential solution as we were able to purchase books via an older version of the Android app (version 8.53). Therefore, you may not want to update your Kindle app if you still want to purchase books in the app – although we would not be surprised if a server-side change eventually disables this option.