Amazon’s often-overlooked Goodreads and Kindle services are undergoing significant changes. In a recent update, Amazon announced layoffs at its Books division, eliminating some of the workers from its already small department. The Amazon job cuts were confirmed by Reuters, which said that fewer than 100 workers were impacted by the change in an effort to improve the efficiency of the affected departments and streamline its operations.
This is a common refrain among employers when it comes to layoffs, as businesses often benefit from trimming the excess and reassigning the remaining workers to posts where their skills can be better utilized. The Amazon book platform job cuts are unsurprising as the company has been exploring reorganization efforts across its many business wings over the last three years.
Amazon’s Books division is next in line for job cuts. (Image: Pexels)
Amazon Layoffs Across Books Division to Help with More Efficient Operations
E-commerce giant Amazon is primarily known for its global shopping platform that has goods of all kinds easily available and hand-delivered on a scale that few other e-commerce services have been able to duplicate. Amazon’s Alexa assistant is another popular product and service, often equipped in its smart home devices that rival the gadgets offered by other product-based tech companies. Amazon Prime’s streaming and advertising business continues to thrive in 2025, with some of the biggest movie releases arriving on the platform every month.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is another prominent business line that has taken on a life of its own, growing more popular every day. The company has multiple business avenues that generate sales, but its book division rarely receives as much attention. Amazon has quietly grown its book business to insurmountable scales, providing readers with books, reviews, as well as devices to read on.
Many devices have been released to rival the Kindle, but the handheld e-readers still remain the top choice among bookworms. Similarly, many rival platforms have emerged for tracking and reviewing the latest books since Amazon’s purchase of Goodreads in 2013, but despite the lack of any substantial UI and quality-of-life updates, the platform has continued to thrive. Now, as a part of Amazon’s larger job cuts and reorganization efforts, layoffs in the books division have been announced.
What We Know About the Amazon Book Platform Job Cuts
We have a few insights into the Amazon layoffs announced at the Books division. The company is cutting fewer than 100 jobs across the Goodreads and Kindle teams, but the exact breakup is unknown. Goodreads’ LinkedIn page states the team has over 110 employees, but online sources suggest the headcount numbers above 400. The strength of the Kindle team is unknown.
Business Insider reportedly acquired an internal email that was shared with affected employees. The email informed workers that they would receive full pay and benefits for the next 60 days along with additional severance pay. New York and New Jersey employees could expect similar benefits but for 90 days.
What Is the Reason for the Amazon Layoffs at its Book Division?
Elaborating on the details of the layoffs, the company said, “As part of our ongoing work to make our teams and programs operate more efficiently, and to better align with our business roadmap, we’ve made the difficult decision to eliminate a small number of roles within the Books organization. We don’t make these decisions lightly, and we’re committed to supporting affected employees through their transitions.”
No other major changes have been announced to the Goodreads and Kindle services recently, so it is unclear if the cuts are being made in preparation for any new goals or investments in the Books division. For now, Amazon’s Goodreads and Kindle layoffs appear to be strictly a matter of operational efficiency.
With the rise of conversations around reading habits online, particularly with the thriving TikTok “BookTok” culture, Goodreads should be a flourishing platform, but it is important to acknowledge that the app and website are entirely free to use. This means that revenue from the service is extremely limited to advertising and data aggregation. It is unlikely that there are any major benefits received from growing the Goodreads team, so it isn’t surprising that reducing the headcount has been seen as a profitable strategy.
Tech Layoffs Continue to Haunt Workers in the Industry
The recently announced Amazon job cuts are a part of the company’s larger efforts to restructure its workforce—a move that has resulted in over 27,000 cuts since 2022. For a company as expansive as Amazon, bringing down the headcount can be a very rewarding decision in balancing expenses in the long run.
The company is also one of the leading users of robotics services in its business, and while this isn’t necessarily relevant to the cuts at Goodreads and Kindle, it does affect the company’s warehouse workers and how they operate. There is a constant fear of automation and AI among employees across industries and these fears are being realized with the cuts at multiple tech giants like Microsoft and IBM. Even innocuous services like Duolingo have given in to the temptation of being driven by AI.
The Amazon book review site’s cuts may be very small compared to the large-scale cuts across other organizations, but they do confirm the fears that no jobs will be safe in 2025. Will this be the last round of layoffs at Amazon? We’ll have to wait and see but that does appear unlikely. CEO Andy Jassy previously expressed a desire to tighten up the bureaucracy at its organization and this came with the promise of reducing the number of managers at Amazon to “remove layers and flatten organizations.” More reductions are expected in the coming months to further this goal.
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