Kindle books can now be bought directly in the iOS app — in the US, at least.
Amazon is the latest developer to take advantage of Apple’s court-mandated App Store changes, and has finally made it possible to buy books directly in the iPhone Kindle app.
It’s generally been Spotify that’s thrown up its arms and claimed Apple won’t let it on the App Store, when really it means Apple wouldn’t let it on for free. Now that Apple has been forced to allow it and all US developers on for nothing, there has been a genuine improvement to one particular app.
As of now, or at least unless Apple loses its appeal against the ruling, the Kindle app on iPhone now works the way it always should have. You can browse the Amazon Kindle bookstore through it as ever, but now you are also offered a “Get Book” button.
Previously, and very tediously, you could browse all you like and you could even send a sample chapter or two to your iPhone. But you couldn’t actually buy the book, not through the Kindle app.
Instead, making absolute sense, you had to buy it through the separate Amazon app.
On the same iPhone.
One part of Amazon got a deal with Apple to allow that without fees, another part didn’t. So you had to use go to a different app to complete a purchase.
It was nonsensical except in the way that it made sense because you knew it was that Amazon would be damned if it paid Apple any money. Amazon is for earning cash, not for spending it.
And the thing is that we got used to it. So used to it that it might take a beat for you to even notice, but once you do, you’ll never schlep back off to the regular Amazon app again.
One reason we got used to this jumping between apps, though, was because this is about books. Books already have razor-thin margins, with authors getting a few cents of the retail price.
Giving Apple 30% in theory means taking away money from the authors, although of course it isn’t. It’s taking profit away from Amazon, which has bludgeoned publisher prices down as far as it can go.
Authors seemingly don’t matter to Amazon, and nor do publishers, and even nor do users. None of us seem to matter to the law either, since in 2013 the courts infamously blamed Apple for what was actually being done by every other publisher and platform.
Adding a “Get Book” button to the iOS Kindle app is great for all of us, but it has nothing to do with what’s right for customers. Certainly it has nothing to do with what is right for the publishing industry.
Instead, it has solely happened because it doesn’t cost Amazon anything more and it should get them some extra sales.
Apple definitely shot itself in the foot over its non-compliance with the original anti-steering ruling, and all you can say is that it aimed well. But still, Amazon, Spotify, and the rest now have free access to more than a billion potential customers.
And Apple, which created that iPhone market, gets nothing. It doesn’t seem right, but then we’re not corporations slugging it out over our respective bottom lines.
