The Amazon Kindle Store in China will be closing down in June of 2023. The Amazon Fire Tablets, Kindle e-readers and the Kindle apps for Android and iOS will no longer be able to buy, browse or add titles to the Wishlist next year. This announcement occurred on the Kindle Weibo account on Thursday. The e-commerce company said it has already stopped supplying third-party sellers with Kindle e-readers, such as Alibaba, T-Mall, Taobao, and JD. However, there are 3rd parties that continue to sell it.
Although the Amazon Store will be closing down, Chinese users will be able to download previously purchased ebooks until June 30th, 2024, and then Amazon will be shutting down their cloud download system. So users will really have to make sure that all downloads are on the Kindles internal storage for them to be read. Users will be able to sideload in their own books.
Amazon began selling its Kindle e-readers in China in 2013, and it quickly became an important market for that business, a former Amazon executive that oversaw the country told Chinese state media in 2017. Amazon also shuttered its e-commerce marketplace in China in 2019 and has shifted its focus to cross-border selling to Chinese consumers.
There is no shortage of digital book retailers in China, that will likely see an influx of new users in the coming year. More than 500 million people listened to audiobooks or read ebooks in 2021, according to research by the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association. China’s digital reading market generated more than six billion dollars in sales last year, an increase of more than 18% from 2020.
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.
