Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) is denying a frustrated publisher’s claim that it has indefinitely stopped adding any more newspapers and magazines to its Kindle store around the world.
“Completely out of the blue, Amazon have told us they have decided to stop publishing any new newspapers on the Kindle indefinitely, worldwide,” says Gannett’s Herald & Times Group of Scotland, which was awaiting approval for its Kindle edition.
The Herald & Times says Amazon has suspended its approval of black-and-white editions submitted by publishers while it works through a backlog of submitted titles and reprioritises resources – a closure that is supposedly not permanent but which may be long-term.
But Amazon tells paidContent: “That’s not true — we are accepting newspapers on Kindle.
“However, we are not always able to immediately launch every publisher who contacts us using our more heavyweight integration method. For publishers that want to add their newspaper onto Kindle in self-service fashion, they can also do so via the Amazon Appstore for Android.”
Herald & Times Group, which publishes the Glasgow Herald, Sunday Herald, Evening Times and integrated HeraldScotland.com, submitted its edition two months ago and had since progressively tweaked it to Amazon’s requests. It is frustrated that, despite this back-and-forth, it received notice the edition will now not go live.
The Newspapers section of the Kindle Store currently carries nearly 200 newspapers.
Many publishers have come to operate a strategy of availability on multiple devices. Across those devices, Kindle is low in publishers’ priority list compared with iPad, but important compared with other platforms.
Somewhere between Herald & Times Group’s claim and Amazon’s statement may lay the truth. It sounds as though Amazon is facing some issues managing an influx of Kindle newspaper and magazines that include both content feeds and digital replicas. And publishers who want their papers to be available for sale immediately may have to publish them as colour Kindle Fire tablet editions for now.
Publishers have also become well used to dealing with Apple’s back-and-forth app approval process.