The purpose of agency pricing is to level the playing field so nobody has a pricing advantage.
Publishers only implemented this system in 2015, when Amazon basically set their own prices, took a loss on every title sold, in order to spur Kindle adoption. Major publishers such as Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon and Shuster, Penguin Random House set the prices of an ebook and all retailers have to sell it at that specific price, this is known as agency pricing. Why can’t Amazon just continue to sell books on Android and just pay Google the 30% commission on each title sold? This is because anyone who operates a bookstore and stocks it with digital content from major publishers are acting as an agent for the publisher.
Google said it would remove apps that didn’t comply with its billing system rules. This all changed, when Google announced in 2021 that they would start mandating that all apps had to use their billing system by June 1st, 2022. They did this because Google did not actively enforce that everyone uses their own billing system, and this worked really good for around ten years. Amazon then doubled down on their official app for Android. To get around this issue, Amazon developed their K indle Cloud Reader, which was designed to work with Safari and allowed people to buy and read books right in the browser. Since Apple users are more affluent and buy the most content, this was a serious blow. Amazon is the latest company to suspend digital transactions on Android, in recent weeks Audible and Barnes and Noble ceased selling audiobooks and ebooks in their apps.Īmazon pulled the ability to buy digital books in their iOS app back in 2011, when Apple implemented a similar policy, where they forced companies to use their own billing system. Considering Amazon is the largest ebook seller in the world, the paid commission to Google would be staggering. This has happened because Google has now mandated that all apps use their own billing system and will take a 30% cut out of each transaction.
When trying to buy digital books, a new screen is displayed, letting customers know that in order to remain compliment with Google policy changes, buying ebooks is no longer supported. Amazon has disabled the ability to buy ebooks in the Kindle app for Android.
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