Last month through January Amazon held the first ever Kindle Challenge where participants could complete various Kindle-related goals and tasks to earn a $5 ebook credit (or just bragging rights for some folks).
I was curious to see if they’d have a new Kindle Challenge for February or if it was just going to be a one-time thing. Unfortunately there isn’t a challenge for February but it sounds like it’s something they’ll be doing again in the future.
On the page for the January Kindle Challenge there’s a note that says, “Sign up to receive email notifications about upcoming reading challenges.”
I usually don’t care about earning achievements in games and apps because they serve no purpose in most cases, but the $5 ebook credit was just enough to spark my interest in participating in last month’s Kindle Challenge.
I’ll admit I ended up checking the Kindle Challenge page more than I would’ve expected to see if any new badges had been activated, and that made me want to complete more challenges.
In the end I think it was an effective promotion on Amazon’s part, but I felt like the execution could have been a bit better. The daily total reading days counter was always a few days behind, and some of the badges took several days to activate after completion.
Also having different-shaped badges could have been explained better, and it’s weird how some people got different challenges than others. There was also some confusion over why some people got a $5 ebook credit for earning four diamond-shaped badges and others didn’t—perhaps having a Prime membership was a factor.
Either way I think they could expand on the challenges more to make completing all of them more difficult, and they should offer a reward for doing so. Just getting four diamond-shaped badges was too easy. It would also add another level if they had a drawing to giveaway free Kindles and accessories to those that complete the challenges.
Did you participate in the January Kindle Challenge? Would you like to see Amazon come out with new Kindle Challenges periodically?
Got all badges except of Kindle Unlimited and Overachiever. No credit ) (I’m not a prime member).
One time it was a fun, not sure about next ones.
I partiipated in the challenge and the issue I had was thatit didn’t reliably count every day I read. Maybe it only tracks books purchased through Amazon? Which makes more obvious that it is more about selling books rather than encouraging people to read. I realize Amazon is in the book sellling business and the challenge is another form of marketing but I would thnk that by simply encouraging people to read would be enough. do hope they will contnue. I don’t think the challenges were all too easy. They served the purpose of getting one more involved.
I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe sideloaded books didn’t register. I should’ve tried reading one for a few days to see if the days counted.
On my end, sideloaded books did not count (and turning on dark mode on the app didn’t count; I no longer have working devices that support that feature). Also, Alice In Wonderland genuinely is the first in a series, but buying (for free) and reading it through Amazon didn’t trigger my series starter badge. It did count it as reading, though.
I would have rather it be just for fun, with no $5 incentive, than start planning a path to victory like I did, only to realize I’d have to pay them for something to get the $5. It just felt kind of tacky.
Reading to earn a badge, help! I consider this kind of operation to be both stupid and infantilizing.
In the case of the badges I had available, I would have had to spend money to get the credit, so I didn’t complete it. I also thought the design of the badges was deliberately misleading when only some counted toward the credit. Those aspects put a bad taste in my mouth overall with regard to the challenges; I would have found it fun otherwise.
Read every day using the Kindle app. Never got a single badge for that out of the half dozen available in that category. Typical Amazon customer focus.
I’m not an Amazon Prime subscriber and I earned the $5 credit. I’m just waiting for it to show up in my account. I don’t recall if the rule about the diamond badges was there when I first went to the page, but by the time I was aware of it, it was definitely there, at the top and in the rules. When I first started, the reading count was 3 days behind, but by the halfway mark, it was only 1 day behind.
It might have mitigated some of the confusion if Amazon had mentioned, upfront, that the badges might vary from person to person. I’m happy I earned the $5, but it was weird that there were so many more badges to earn after that. To be honest, I aimed for all the badges just to see if there was any other reward. Alas, no.
The part about the diamond-shaped badges was there from the beginning but it was confusing to me because all I saw were squares and hexagons (I think of a diamond-shape having 5 sides with a flat top), and at first I didn’t even notice the badges were different shapes because they were all greyed out.
I was not eligible for the challenge. As a regular Kindle reader I felt that was not fair.
I earned all of the badges 🙂 I would love to do this every month! But then I would rather read than anything, so there’s that.
I did the challenge, earned four diamond badges, and have gotten nothing from Amazon!
Takes up to 72 hours for the credit to show on your account.
The FAQ says the credit will appear by February 15th.
I tried and they said, “You are not eligible for this promotion.”
I thought it was a fun concept – second the comments on the frustrating data delays. My guess is they’ll continue to get better at this and will push this program forward.
I thought it was a fun concept and had fun tracking it and checking.
Going forward, I don’t think some are fair – such as registering a brand new Amazon e-reader. Obviously you aren’t going to buy a new device every time. Some people have OCD completionism habits so I saw this really bugged them. One person I know tried to re-register an existing device for it but it’s only never before registered to the account apparently.
I do think it wasn’t fair to exclude some readers who wanted to join in
I do think having a badge for those who have KU is fine, but if you don’t, again switching it out for something generic just like reading a book should work.
I don’t think it can track sideloaded books accurately, so I get why it doesn’t include those.
Oh, and I got the Prime Reading Badge and Kindle Unlimited badge earned once I read a Kindle Unlimited book. On this account I do not have Prime, though.