Back in November 2019 Amazon announced its plans for a launch in Poland, and while there are no dates set, it looks like launch day may be nearing, with Amazon testing the Polish site with a spin-off from Amazon DE as it continues to advertise for staff in Poland.

Might we see a Poland Kindle store?

Probably not. The Polish-language site via Amazon DE takes us to the DE Kindle store, and that’s likely as close as we will come.

Amazon last launched a Kindle store over five years ago in the Netherlands –

It’s now five years since Amazon last opened a Kindle store. Whatever happened to the Bezos dream “to have every book, ever published, in any language available for Kindle customers”?

and since then we’ve seen Amazon launch in the UAE, Turkey and Singapore, and a marketplace presence in Vietnam, but neither books nor ebooks are part of the package.

Except via third party booksellers, that is. Which brings us neatly to Amazon Israel. Or rather Facebook’s Amazon Israel Best Deals page.

The page only launched in November 2019, after Amazon introduced free-shipping to Israel, as part of its efforts to encourage US marketplace sellers to reach global markets, but already has over 6,000 members.

Ebooks of course are not an option for third-party sellers, but printed books are, and Amazon was quick to check its CreateSpace history and realise Hebrew and Yiddish had posed no production problems before CreateSpace was integrated into KDP as KDP Print.

Now both Yiddish and Hebrew are available as supported languages in KDP, but only for paperbacks.

In fact, along with Latin, the other newcomer to the KDP Supported Languages page, Yiddish and Hebrew are the only three languages to be paperback-only options, while 8 languages are ebook only. (Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, Marathi, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil and Gujarati.)

As RTL (right to left) languages authors and publishers will need to be sure both interior and cover designs meet RTL printing specs. Details here.

Amazon isn’t given to advance notice about these things, but with KDP Print now optimised for RTL languages there’s no logical reason why we should not see Arabic-language paperbacks an option in the near future.

Or indeed why we shouldn’t see LTR languages like Polish, and Czech and Slovakian (Amazon is also advertising for staff here) supported as Amazon builds out its third-party seller market reach across eastern Europe and beyond.

But all the signs so far are that Amazon has no interest in playing publisher games in these new territories, and a dedicate book or Kindle store remains high on the unlikely list for the foreseeable future.