The rules for what counts as a purchase book on Amazon can be quite confusing. Understanding these rules is important to determine your royalty revenue you have earned from your sold books, and also in getting the important Amazon “verified purchase” reviews from your readers. So let’s look first at what does NOT count as a purchased book on Amazon.
It may surprise you to discover the following:
These are consider to be "borrowed" books from Amazon. You can have up to 10 borrowed books at one time. Just like you borrow books from a library, they are not your property and therefore not purchased books.
Authors can offer their books as gifts on Amazon. Again, these are not purchased by the reader strictly speaking, so any review posted from them will be deemed as unverified.
In addition to obvious case of someone buying your book on Amazon, also consider:
Pre-orders count as purchased books, but your royalty revenue will not count until the day of your book release, and reviews cannot be posted until after the release date.
If your book is perma-free (that is to say permanently priced for free) or offered temporarily for free using Amazon's Kindle Select program, then it will be considered as purchased for $0 .