The Kindle Store is an

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e-book An ebook (short for electronic book), also spelled as e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in electronic form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Al ...

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store operated by

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

as part of its retail website and can be accessed from any Amazon Kindle, Fire tablet, or Kindle

mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a smartphone, phone, tablet computer, tablet, or smartwatch, watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop appli ...

. At the launch of the Kindle in November 2007, the store had more than 88,000 digital titles available in the U.S. store. This number increased to more than 275,000 by late 2008 and exceeded 765,000 by August 2011. In July 2014, there were over 2.7 million titles available. As of March 2018, there are over six million titles available in the U.S. Content from the store is purchased online and downloaded using either

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...

or Amazon's Whispernet to bring the content to the user's device. One of the innovations Amazon brought to the store was one-click purchasing which allowed users to quickly purchase an e-book. The Kindle Store uses a recommendation engine that looks at purchase history, browsing history, and reading activity, and then suggests material it thinks the user will like.

Features

Whispersync

Whispersync is a service provided for e-books acquired from the Kindle Store that allows customers to synchronize reading progress, bookmarks, and other information across Kindle devices and Kindle apps. The service debuted with the Kindle 2's release in February 2009.

Lending Library

The Lending Library was added in late 2011 for

Amazon Prime Amazon Prime (styled as prime) is a paid subscription service of Amazon which is available in many countries and gives users access to additional services otherwise unavailable or available at a premium to other Amazon customers. Services inclu ...

members with Kindle e-readers. This perk allows access to the "Kindle Owners' Lending Library" where users can borrow one e-book, choosing from over 600,000 titles as of July 2014, per calendar month from the Kindle Store for free. The library was later expanded to include Fire tablets; as of February 2018, the service had over 1.7 million titles available.

Kindle Unlimited

In July 2014, Amazon added the Kindle Unlimited subscription service that initially offered unlimited access to over 638,000 titles and over 7,000

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for a $9.99 monthly fee. As of June 2015, there were over one million titles available in Kindle Unlimited, from publishers such as

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company ( ; HMH) is an American publisher of textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, and reference works. The company is based in the Financial District, Boston, Boston Financial District. It was fo ...

Lonely Planet Lonely Planet is a travel guide book publisher. Founded in Australia in 1973, the company has printed over 150 million books. History 20th century Lonely Planet was founded by married couple Maureen Wheeler, Maureen and Tony Wheeler. In 19 ...

Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster LLC (, ) is an American publishing house owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts since 2023. It was founded in New York City in 1924, by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. Along with Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group US ...

, Wizarding World Digital, and Workman Publishing Company. As of February 2017, the U.S. version of Kindle Unlimited includes over 1.5 million titles includes over 290,000 foreign language titles. Amazon pays authors by using a per-page rate and during 2016 nearly $200 million was paid to authors. In 2019, Amazon paid over $300 million to authors and publishers that provide content to Kindle Unlimited.

Prime Reading

In October 2016, another perk was added for Amazon Prime members called "Prime Reading". Prime Reading gives the ability to read as much material as they wish from a selection of over 1,000 e-books, magazines, comic books, children's books, and more for no additional fee.

E-book pricing

In late 2007, new releases and ''New York Times'' best sellers were being offered for approximately $11 at the store, with the first chapters of many books offered as free samples. Many titles, including some classics, are offered free of charge or at a low price, which has been stated to relate to the cost of adapting the book to the Kindle format. Magazines, newspapers, and blogs via RSS are provided for a monthly subscription fee or during a free trial period. Newspaper subscriptions cost from $1.99 to $27.99 per month; magazines charge between $1.25 and $10.99 per month, and blogs charge from $0.99 to $1.99 per month. Amazon e-book sales overtook print for one day for the first time on

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2009. International users may pay different prices for e-books depending on the country listed as their home address. In February 2017, the

Association of American Publishers The Association of American Publishers (AAP) is the national trade association of the American book publishing industry. AAP lobbies for book, journal and education publishers in the United States. AAP members include most of the major commercial ...

released data that shows the U.S. adult e-book market declined 16.9% in the first nine months of 2016 over the same time in 2015. This decline is partly due to widespread e-book price increases, known as agency pricing, by major publishers that Amazon had recently allowed bringing the average e-book price from $6 to nearly $10.

File formats

The Kindle Store offers e-books in Amazon's proprietary e-book formats: AZW, and, for fourth-generation and later Kindles, AZW3, also called KF8. In August 2015, the "Kindle Format 10" (KFX) file format, which has enhanced typography, was added to the Store. E-books available in KFX are indicated on the e-book's description page. The Kindle Store's terms of use forbid transferring Amazon format e-books to another user or a different type of device. However, Amazon allows limited lending of certain e-books.

Country availability

References

External links

* . * . {{Ebooks Amazon (company) Ebook sources 2007 software