Amazon has decided to retire a very useful, if somewhat underused feature by book buyers with news that Kindle Matchbook will cease to be on Oct. 31.
As The Digital Reader reports, Kindle Matchbook existed to allow authors to offer a Kindle version of their work at a greatly reduced price (or even for free) for customers who purchase a print edition. The Kindle version could be offered to those customers for $2.99 or less, giving them a digital copy that couldn't be lost or damaged.
No reason has been given as to why Kindle Matchbook is being retired, but the suspicion is that customers simply weren't using it. Clearly, if you decide to purchase a print edition you aren't really that interested in a digital copy if it costs more money. That isn't to say Matchbook wasn't being used at all, and for those who do take advantage of the cheap ebook pricing, this news will be disappointing.
The good news is, there's still time to take advantage of Matchbook if you are buying print books on Amazon, you just need to select books that have the offer attached and to do so this month. For authors, any books currently enrolled in the Matchbook program will be automatically unenrolled at the end of October and payments will continue as normal.
Kindle Matchbook launched back in 2013, but publishers didn't like it and there hasn't exactly been a lot of marketing around it. Amazon certainly didn't highlight the offer very well whenever I've purchased a print book. The focus now seems to be on simply pricing Kindle editions lower than print editions, but making them a separate purchase.