Amazon China Kindle Store will stop operation on June 30, 2023

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

Interesting. Weird they are pulling out of such a big market. I'm not sure why they would do this. Is it because they don't have enough market share? Or is it because they are not allowed to use customer data etc because of the government?

A few articles I've read seems to indicate that their market share has sunk to "niche" status. I haven't seen any real data, however, except for the claim that at their height of market share in China they had about a 40% of it.

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by Quoth

But Amazon keep insisting I own it.

I'd suspect with a decently funded legal case any fine print anywhere denying ownership would be found to be invalid.

Obviously ownership doesn't give exactly the same options as a paper version, where indeed you own that copy, but have only a licence to the content. You can't copy or republish the paper book you bought, as the ownership doesn't include those rights on the content.

But what would ownership give you? The right to sell used?

( Baen Books. No DRM. You own it; it's yours) same question.

Amazon can't sell you rights the copyright owner never sold them which is lawyer -fun when a book is put up by a pirate.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

But what would ownership give you? The right to sell used?

A guarantee they won't disappear before you've read them, or re-read them.

[maxwang]

I am from China and registered today to say something from Chinese users' perspectives.

I'll try my best to make all the sentences are readable because English is my second language.
I used MobileRead a lot but did not register before. Today I find this interesting post and can't help to say something so I tried all the methods to register. The pain point is the random question: "What is Hannah's name?", I only heard Hannah Montana on US TV but it is wrong. , finnally I figured it out, name does not equal to Full Name. This is not Chinese

I love the eBook idea. The kindle is portable and I can read anytime anywhere. I have just two Kindles and bought hundreds of ebooks. The reading experience is excellent except:
- slow response for any click on the screen (kindle pw 4 is better)
- unable to create folders in the library. This is a disaster when I tried to organize books.
- can't install other ebook software such as Wechat Reader. Kindle does not have all the ebooks, I have to buy them from other platform.

So from my point of view, why Kindle can not continue to run business in China?
1, Readers are fewer. the Z generations are spending all the time on their phones, Ticktok, Games, Wechat, etc. I can see only a handful people reading in the subway cabinate. All are pitching on their phone screens. So it is not the Amazon is nitch, the whole book/publishing market is shrinking in China.
2, Too many competitors. Kindle is the first launched ebook product in China and soon get many local competitors. They follow Amazon's business idea and find out their own advantage. For example, Jindong used to sell real books and soon launched its ebook store. Wenzu add many functions to the ebook reader and turned it into an office device. Xunfei is good at real-time recording voices and converting them to text. Wechat Read gains users through free books and earns money in Wechat advertising ecosystem. Consumers are distracted by other platforms so Amazon's market share drops.
3, Government Policy is not a problem because just like AlaVander said, Amazon is just a distributor. The publishers have to follow the government's rules.

China is a big market but Amazon does not survive. The same problems occurred in many West companies. Though they are mentioning diversity and localization on their websites, most of them do not trust Chinese managers. Amazon's main business can't compete with Jindong, Taobao, VIP.com, and so many other local eCommerce companies. I can receive the product on the same day but have to wait for 3 days from Amazon. Other platforms have all kinds of promotions but Amazon seldom does it. When considering purchasing online, Amazon does not come to my mind.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by haertig

That just reinforces what many people recommend doing. Step one: Buy book. Step two: Download to your local computer. Step three: Remove DRM. Step four: Convert book to whatever other formats you use now or may in the future. It's probably smartest to do this from the get-go on every book you purchase rather than waiting on some announcement from Amazon that makes it imperative to do it, preferably ASAP. You may have a backlog of a lot of books to do if you're not proactive and instead choose to wait for the announcement (assuming the announcement comes with adequate lead time in the first place - there may not even be any announcement, or you may miss it).

Another reason to be proactive: What if this scenario unfolds? Amazon announces their pull-out along with allowing you to download your books until June 30, 2023 (like they just did). China says "Screw you Amazon! We will ban you from any connections into China immediately!!!" (which is something they have the capability to do). You better hope you have been proactive, otherwise you lose it all, despite what Amazon had planned to allow initially.

Let's just say that if EPUB2's Adobe DRM hadn't been removable, I would never have gotten into e-books except for maybe some of the classics.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by maxwang

China is a big market but Amazon does not survive. The same problems occurred in many West companies. Though they are mentioning diversity and localization on their websites, most of them do not trust Chinese managers.

Welcome. Thank you for an interesting and informative post.

If I understand correctly, ending of eBook support is just one part of Amazon's gradual pulling out of China. This must be because of being unsuccessful in your marketplace, probably for reasons you suggest.

[Paperbackstash]

That was all informative and makes sense, maxwang, thank you.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by AlaVander

Today, I received an e-mail notice titled "notice on operation adjustment of China Kindle Store" sent by Amazon China, which said that China Kindle Store would stop operation on June 30, 2023.


In addition, Kindle China's biggest competitor, Wechat Read, has acquired millions of active users in just a few years through a series of initiatives such as free reading, better user experience, and mixed social attributes.

Sorry, what is "mixed social attributes," please?

Hitch

[hleo12]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Sorry, what is "mixed social attributes," please?

Hitch

Since wechat is a social network/messaging platform, I'm guessing it's integrated into their network. Like sharing quotes/highlights directly to your page, or interact with other people who have shared their own.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by hleo12

Since wechat is a social network/messaging platform, I'm guessing it's integrated into their network. Like sharing quotes/highlights directly to your page, or interact with other people who have shared their own.

"attributes?" I admit it, I can't figure out the intent there. Thanks for the info though. I don't really do social media any longer--it's pretty horrible watching The Henhouse Effect as I've named it (watching people attempt to peck other people to death for no apparent reason other than, they can...), so...

Hitch

[hleo12]

Originally Posted by Hitch

"attributes?" I admit it, I can't figure out the intent there. Thanks for the info though. I don't really do social media any longer--it's pretty horrible watching The Henhouse Effect as I've named it (watching people attempt to peck other people to death for no apparent reason other than, they can...), so...

Hitch

You can think of it as a farmer's market book club

Instead of having a round robin discussion, you set up your stall of opinions and hope people stop by and take a look

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Let's just say that if EPUB2's Adobe DRM hadn't been removable, I would never have gotten into e-books except for maybe some of the classics.

I got into eBooks because I was able to remove the DRM from LIT format eBooks and because of LibPRS500 (first iteration of what became Calibre).

[buyifan43]

Originally Posted by hleo12

Since wechat is a social network/messaging platform, I'm guessing it's integrated into their network. Like sharing quotes/highlights directly to your page, or interact with other people who have shared their own.

Wechat not only acts as a chatting/sharing platform or social network but does many things in our chinese people's daily lives, as it has something called "Mini Programs" that are web apps, e.g. checking the "health code" (idk what is it in English but switching the language to English shows this) , ordering food online and use shared bicycles and so on,wechat is also used for paying by most of us, so it surely is integrated into our daily lives.
interesting things:
Though wechat originally aims to be small and convenient, now it takes a few GB of space on my phone and if you don't clean frequently it can grow to 20GB eventually XD

[rantanplan]

So Wechat is already what Facebook always wanted to be

[nrsbfrkv]

From China as well, and new account for obvious reasons.

Originally Posted by maxwang

3, Government Policy is not a problem because just like AlaVander said, Amazon is just a distributor. The publishers have to follow the government's rules.

Actually it's your point 3 that's the reason. Companies need license to distribute content in China, books/music/movie, you name it. The caveat is foreign company can not apply on its own, so Amazon has to choose a Chinese partner, and its partnership bailed out. If you need reference, during the first few days after this announcement, on a certain programmer forum some insiders described the way Amazon circumvented numerous regulations, but by now they are all censored.

Overall I'm pretty amazed Amazon pulled this off for so long actually. Because you can not name another foreign company which distribute books in China, period. Among those cultural content, the control over books is the most tight. Even Apple has to quietly close down iBooks in China after a pretty high-profile announcement a few years back, and mind you Apple has great great relation with China gov.

Point 1 and 2 is kinda irrelevant because same can be said outside China as well. The audiences simply don't overlap.

Originally Posted by maxwang

China is a big market but Amazon does not survive. The same problems occurred in many West companies.

Precisely. TikTok/Zoom can be advertised as No.1 all day long in the US, while western companies get blocked behind GFW without a trace, most ppl don't even know their existence. This is the problem.