You can buy books through the Amazon Kindle app again, but only in this region

Amazon is seemingly taking advantage of a Google Play program only available for users in the EEA

You can buy books through the Amazon Kindle app again, but only in this region
  • Some Android users in Europe are able to buy books through the Kindle app again.
  • This comes after Amazon had turned off the ability to buy books through the Kindle app in June 2022, citing changes to Google Play policy.
  • Amazon is seemingly making use of Google Play’s alternative billing without user choice program that’s only available for users in the EEA.

Back in June 2022, Amazon killed off book purchases via the Kindle app for Android. Following this change, users could no longer subscribe to the Kindle Unlimited service, nor could they buy or rent Kindle books through the app. The reason Amazon did this was because Google was going to crack down on apps that didn’t use their billing system. Switching over to Google’s billing system would’ve meant giving Google a cut of every purchase, something Amazon didn’t want to do. That’s why for the past two years, users have been unable to purchase any content from within the Amazon Kindle app for Android, though that’s starting to change for users in Europe.

One of our readers in Europe recently contacted me to say that they saw a new dialog in the Kindle app. They shared a screenshot of this dialog, which we’ve attached below, that appears when they tried to make a book purchase.