The Verge’s Andrew Liszewski reports that Amazon’s Kindle app for iOS now provides a button to go get an ebook:
Contrary to prior limitations, there is now a prominent orange “Get book” button on Kindle app’s book listings.
“We regularly make improvements to our apps to help ensure we are providing customers the most convenient experience possible,” Amazon spokesperson Tim Gillman told The Verge over email. “By selecting ‘Get Book’ within the Kindle for iOS app, customers can now complete their purchase through their mobile web browser.”
Honestly, I’m not sure I ever thought I’d see the day. I confirmed this for myself: clicking the Get Book link takes you out to Safari to the page for the book on Amazon’s site. No muss, no fuss.
Notably, this is the Kindle app, not the Amazon app. In the latter, you still—for the moment—see a note that “this app does not support purchasing of this content.” I’m intrigued as to why Amazon chose to do one but not the other—I rarely open the Kindle app unless I already have a book I’m reading; it’s the Amazon app I turn to for shopping. But perhaps this is Amazon’s way of nudging people towards the Kindle app as their literal one-stop shop.
Out of curiosity, I checked Kobo’s app as well, which acts as both the reader and storefront for that site, and there’s now a Get Book link there as well, though it pops up a separate panel and shows Apple’s (now prohibited) scare screen about leaving the app and going to an external website.
As I said in my previous post about the injunction against Apple, I think this development is ultimately a huge benefit to Apple’s customers. Figuring out how to do the dance to buy ebooks was annoying for people who knew what they were doing, and if you ever had the “pleasure” of trying to explain to a layperson that they had to go to the web to buy an ebook, well, you’ll not only know how much of a pain it was but also how the only explanation you could realistically provide for why this was the case was “Apple wants more money.”
How long this new normal will last is anyone’s guess, but again, though Apple has already appealed the court’s decision, it’s hard to imagine the company being able to roll this back—the damage, in many ways, is already done and to reverse course would look immensely and transparently hostile to the company’s own customers: “we want your experience to be worse so we get more of the money we think we deserve.” Not a great look.
