Amazon is ending its Newsstand subscription in another step towards lower operating costs.
It is no longer possible to subscribe to magazines and newspapers in print or Kindle from Amazon. The American giant appears to have taken this new measure to cut its costs. Since March 9, however, it is no longer possible to subscribe. If you have an annual subscription, it certainly does not renew.
Amazon ends subscription to Newsstand
However, you can still manage your subscriptions – such as changing your shipping address – through Amazon until June 6, 7:59 AM ET, but after that you’ll have to contact the publisher directly for any request. Finally, Amazon will only send you the latest issues of your magazines and newspapers until September 4th. The good news is that you will still be able to access any digital releases ever sent to you and Amazon will refund any undelivered issues.
In a statement, Amazon spokeswoman Julia Lee told The Verge that the company is looking at what it can improve as part of its annual review of operations. Julia Lee explained: “After a detailed review of our magazine and newspaper subscriptions and our sales, we have made the difficult decision to discontinue these services. We never take these decisions lightly and will be phasing out these proposals over the coming months. We will continue to support customers, resellers and publishers during this time.”
Additional initiative to reduce operating costs
According to Julia Lee, the company did not make money from these subscriptions and they should now be included in the list of collateral damage associated with cost-cutting efforts. Last January, Amazon decided to increase its layoffs to 18,000 positions after hiring many more to meet huge demand during the pandemic and Covid-related restrictions. Amazon has also put construction on its second headquarters in Arlington, Va., and has closed many Go stores without checkouts in recent months.
If you want to continue receiving new issues of your magazines and newspapers, you will need to switch to another subscription of the same type from their publishers. However, some of them will remain available as part of the Amazon Kindle Unlimited service.