How to Purchase Kindle Books
If you’ve ever tried to purchase Kindle books, you may have tried to do it on your phone and been greeted with this message:
And then you wonder “well, how DO I buy a book on Kindle?”
I’ve often heard from people saying “There is no Kindle version of this book” when they see that message and that just isn’t true.
Here’s what you need to know about how to purchase Kindle books:
What you need to know about how to purchase Kindle books
- You cannot purchase Kindle books in the Amazon app. The reason for this is that when you make an in-app purchase Amazon has to share some of that purchase with Google or Apple (depending on what app you have) and Amazon is NOT excited about that.
- You CAN purchase Kindle books from Amazon on your desktop computer or on your phone as long as you’re using a browser to open Amazon, rather than the Amazon app.
- You can also buy Kindle books from your Kindle e-reader. Since you sign into your Kindle with your Amazon account, your payment options are already set up so you can just browse or search for a Kindle book you want and then purchase it straight from your ereader (assuming you’re connected to the Internet).
- You can NOT buy a Kindle book on the Kindle app from your phone. This is for the same reasons I mentioned above about why you can’t purchase Kindle books in the Amazon app – Amazon isn’t interested in sharing the profits with Google or Apple!
Basically, you can buy Kindle books in a browser (on your phone or computer) or through an Amazon device. You CANNOT buy Kindle books through apps like the Amazon or Kindle apps. I hope that clears things up and makes it easy to grab the books you want with minimal frustration!
Any other questions about how to buy Kindle books? I’m happy to help – leave your questions in the comments!
P.S. You can also check out Libby ebooks and send them to your Kindle! Here are the directions for sending them to an adult profile and here are directions for adding a library book to a kids profile! Note that Hoopla doesn’t play with Kindles – you won’t be able to send Hoopla ebooks to your Kindle, whether it is a kids or an adult Kindle!
Great tips for newbies! If you have kindle unlimited, you can borrow books from the Amazon app though, so that is nice.