There isn’t a day that goes by, that hundreds of people on social media, ask why they cannot buy Kindle books on Kindle for Android anymore. The short answer is early last year, Amazon disabled in-app purchases. This was because Google wanted to take a 30% of each book sold and ebooks have a low margin for profitability. Suffice to say, if you download the Kindle app from Google Play, you can’t buy Kindle books anymore.
Google used to have a laissez faire attitude towards taking a cut of each in-app transaction. This all changed in 2022, when they mandated that everyone who sells digital content on Android, had to use the new Google Play Billing system.They gave developers a couple of months to make changes to their apps, or they would be booted from the Google Play Store. They took a 30% cut out of each transaction, which is similar to what Apple charges. Considering Amazon is the largest ebook seller in the world, the paid commission to Google would be staggering. Amazon was the latest company to suspend digital transactions on Android, Audible and Barnes and Noble ceased selling audiobooks and ebooks in their apps too.
There is a way to continue to buy Kindle books on your Android device, but you need to uninstall the Kindle app from Google Play. You need to download and install the Amazon App Store or the Samsung Galaxy App Store. The Kindle app on those two ecosystems use Amazon’s own billing system and not Googles. This will allow you to continue to buy digital content in the app, such as books, comics, manga. You can also download Audible from the Amazon App Store to buy and listen to audiobooks.
It is important to note that you have to sideload these app stores on your Android phone, Android Tablet or Android e-reader/e-note. In this day and age, you should know how to do this already, but if you need assistance, drop a comment below and one of our regular readers should help.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
