What's the status of free books?

[TimothyEllis]

Someone on Quora just said that Amazon has removed the buttons for reporting a book is now free on another site, and has decided not to allow free books anymore.

Is there any truth in this?

Or is it just their bots are so efficient now, not reporting is necessary?

Or they expect everyone to ask for price matching though KDP help?

Or both?

Since I don't have any free books, I've no idea what Amazon's current policy on them is.

[R. C.]

I looked on Amazon > Kindle > Top Free eBooks and received a list.

I checked my permafree, and they came up as $0.00.

I don't see any "I found this free..." buttons but I am not sure where to look.

R.C.

[TimothyEllis]

I don't see any "I found this free..." buttons but I am not sure where to look.

I think that was removed donkey's years ago.

The person claimed there was no ability to update your books anymore either, but that is wrong, since I did one for one of my purchased books.

But I wanted to check on the free issue before saying the whole lot was just crap.

[cecilia_writer]

I've never used a button - I just set them to free elsewhere and wait. I recently swapped one out of free that I thought had been free for too long and set a different one in the series to free, and the swap didn't take very long at all, maybe 2 weeks max.

[Jeff Tanyard]

I'm still getting free downloads for Clouds of Venus.  Nothing has changed in that regard.  Some of the territorial stores occasionally revert back to paid, so I have to contact Amazon to have them set back to free again, but that's been the case for years.

If Amazon gets rid of permafree, there will be lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth all over the place, not just a single comment about it on Quora.  Also, keep in mind that Amazon's price-matching policy isn't just for books.  It's for the whole store.  It's a fundamental part of their business model.  As long as this policy exists, and as long as other stores offer free books, then Amazon will almost certainly price-match to those free books.

[Post-Crisis D]

The key phrase is "Someone on Quora." 

[notthatamanda]

Wasn't it a "report a lower price" button? Which we all used for free?

I think in the KDP support they now have a template to put the links where the books are cheaper or free elsewhere. That's for authors/publishers, in your account. The old button was on the book page for customers.

[Jeff Tanyard]

Wasn't it a "report a lower price" button? Which we all used for free?

I think in the KDP support they now have a template to put the links where the books are cheaper or free elsewhere. That's for authors/publishers, in your account. The old button was on the book page for customers.

Correct.  For a long time, contacting Amazon and requesting price-matching to permafree was a very hit-or-miss proposition.  You were more likely to make it happen if you had other people simultaneously reporting a lower price elsewhere on your behalf.

At some point, that changed, and Amazon began to routinely price-match on request on a reliable basis.  Which is much better than the old more convoluted way, in my opinion.

[TimothyEllis]

Correct.  For a long time, contacting Amazon and requesting price-matching to permafree was a very hit-or-miss proposition.  You were more likely to make it happen if you had other people simultaneously reporting a lower price elsewhere on your behalf.

At some point, that changed, and Amazon began to routinely price-match on request on a reliable basis.  Which is much better than the old more convoluted way, in my opinion.

What I'm being told is they no longer take price matching requests any more.

[Jeff Tanyard]

What I'm being told is they no longer take price matching requests any more.

Somebody probably forgot to disable some pop-up blocker on his browser.  I've done that before.  I tried to send a price-matching request, but the option wasn't working, and I freaked out a little.  Then I turned my blockers off, and the web page worked again.

[TimothyEllis]

What I'm being told is they no longer take price matching requests any more.

Somebody probably forgot to disable some pop-up blocker on his browser.  I've done that before.  I tried to send a price-matching request, but the option wasn't working, and I freaked out a little.  Then I turned my blockers off, and the web page worked again.

Can you do a screen dump of how it should look?

[Jeff Tanyard]

Can you do a screen dump of how it should look?

The first pic below is what the help menu looks like AFTER I clicked price matching but WITHOUT turning all blockers off.





As you can see, there's no secondary menu on the right side of the screen, only white space.  Basically, you click the price matching link and nothing happens.  One could easily jump to the conclusion that Amazon had disabled the link.

Now I'll turn the blockers off and reload the page.





As you can see, the secondary menu now appears.