I got an email from Amazon about an upcoming promotion where you can earn double Kindle Points, which isn’t unusual, but this time it runs for 3 days straight, which is unusual. They usually only offer 2x points for one or two days, unless it’s a major sales event like Cyber Monday.
I wonder if Amazon has noticed that less people are buying Kindle ebooks now after they removed the ability to download and transfer Kindle ebooks on February 26th, and they’re trying to find more ways to boost sales.
Either way, this 2x Kindle Points promo runs from April 15 through April 17th, between 12:00 AM and 11:59 PM Pacific Daylight Time. You’ll earn double the Kindle Points on all Kindle ebook purchases during that time, and once you hit 300 points you can cash them in for a $3 credit toward the purchase of your next Kindle ebook(s).
The Kindle Rewards Beta program is still only available in the US, however, so it’s only for US accounts, and there are some other stipulations that you can read about on the terms and conditions page.
Amazon used to do the 2x points thing fairly regularly, at least a few times per month, so it could just be a coincidence, but I just don’t remember them offering double points for three days in a row before, except during Cyber Monday weekend when they offered double points for 4 days.
A lot of people were saying they were going to stop buying ebooks from Amazon after the D&T fiasco, and with all the typical internet misinformation that went along with that decision to make it seem worse than it really was (many people mistakenly thought Amazon was removing the ability to download ebooks to Kindle ereaders and apps), maybe enough people stopped buying Kindle ebooks that Amazon is actually starting to notice a decline in ebook sales.
I “buy” books from Amazon… the free ones I find in my BookBub emails. Every so often I will spend money on a particular author that I follow diligently, i.e. Louise Penny, John Sanford… Otherwise I stick to $2.99 and below. I’m not into heavy literature or NYT bestsellers; as long as I have a romance or mystery to help me latibulate, I’m fine. I started doing this many years ago when shortly after I bought my first Kindle, the “$9.99 and under prices went by the wayside. I now know the publisher sets the price, but I had used the $9.99 as a good part of my decision to buy the Kindle. So it’s tough for me to get double points of nothing.
After they locked down the kindle, the only books I’m buying are the one’s I pre-ordered from my favorite authors last year. Now since I left my Kindle in my locker in permanent sleep mode, I don’t see any advertisements for new books on the home screen that I don’t see. I think the ‘you might like’ section was probably the reason I bought so many books in the first place. And having gone through some of my backlog, they’re seemingly all AI slop anyway. So many books and the contents after the first few chapters are just random gibberish. Wtf.
I haven’t bought a book from Amazon since they took away the “Download & Transfer Via USB” option. I also haven’t taken a free monthly Kindle First book since then (which is no great loss as those have tended not to be very good in my experience). Even if I wanted to continue to spend my book money there, my Kindle Keyboard’s battery is so dead it won’t even hold enough of a charge to power up, and I don’t want to use the Kindle app on my Android reader. But that’s all right; I still have over 500 unread books to get through, which is more than enough to keep me occupied for the next decade or so …
I was spending between $70 and $90 a month on Kindle books or roughly about $1000 a year. I also haven’t bought a book since they deleted the download, transfer option. To think that I’m gonna spend $1000 a year on books that aren’t mine is preposterous.
When I found out that Amazon Has started their own publishing house and that NONE of the books they publish will be made available to libraries at any price I swore off buying from Amazon completely. The Kindle points program is a joke, and the endless spam you get regarding your points balance, upcoming double points days and points expiring got so bad I blocked them. Amazon doesn’t want to share their authors with libraries? I’m only too happy to boycott authors in their stable.
FWIW, I manually transfered every ebook on my Amazon wishlist to a Kobo wishlist when D&T was killed. I won’t spend another dime on Amazon ebooks.
Like others have commented, I haven’t purchased an ebook from Kindle since they removed the download & transfer, and I have no plans to go back. I’ve been buying from smashwords, Kobo or getting from my library. I suspect they’re having so many sales on the devices and the ebooks, because they are suffering from this.
And I’m hoping this will also push authors into putting their eBooks elsewhere vs. Kindle unlimtied / exclusive.
I too stopped buying Kindle eBooks after Amazon killed D&T. I have enough unread ebooks to last me for a few years, after which I can decide whether to stay with or bail on the platform.