You can finally buy books in the Kindle app, thanks to a California judge

Thanks to the fallout from the Epic Games v. Apple ruling on April 30, you can now purchase books directly through Amazon's Kindle app on iOS.

California judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Apple can no longer take a 27 percent cut from purchases made outside the App Store or prevent developers from directing users to other payment options. (Apple is appealing the ruling, of course.) The court found those restrictions to be anti-competitive.

Apple has appealed the decision but is complying with it for now. The decision has allowed Fortnite to return to the app store, and apps like Spotify and Kindle for iOS have pushed out updates that make it easier to complete purchases within the app. It’s a welcome change, since part of Kindle’s dominance in the e-reader space came from the convenience of buying books directly on the device.

With the update, Kindle users on iOS now see a new "Get Book" button next to titles. Tapping it opens a mobile web browser to complete the purchase.

Credit: Amazon Kindle / Timothy Beck Werth

This is far simpler than before, when users had to manually visit Amazon’s web store through a browser, sign in, and then wait for the book to sync back to the app.

That workaround existed to dodge Apple’s 2011 App Store policy requiring developers to strip out links to external purchasing. Then in 2024, Apple added a 27 percent fee for external payments, on top of the 30 percent it already takes for in-app purchases.

That 30 percent fee is still in place, plus Apple could still win its appeal. But for now, buying ebooks on the Kindle iOS app is finally less of a hassle.