From FUTUREeBOOK comes this question, asked by John Pettigrew:
I ran up against this issue a few days ago. It’s my birthday soon and so I’ve got friends and family asking what I’d like. For years now, I’ve said, “Get me a book, and here’s my online wishlist.” This year, though, I’ve decided to finally get myself a dedicated e-reader as a birthday present to myself. (Until now, I’ve always used my phone to read ebooks.) Given this, I needed to create a new wishlist containing all the ebooks I want to read on my new reader.
You wouldn’t think that this would be difficult, with so many websites selling ebooks. But it turns out to be a lot harder than it should be. Most of them, even the mighty Amazon, will let you put ebooks into your wishlist, but they don’t allow anyone to buy an ebook for you; you can only buy ebooks for yourself. Goodness knows why this should be – they have my account details, after all, because I create the wishlist in the first place. But, no, they don’t allow it. Particularly for Amazon, this flat-out amazed me.
I really don’t see what Mr. Pettigrew is complaining about. He cited Amazon as not having the capability of gifting an e-book and since that is my commercial e-book source of choice (I use a Kindle), I took a look. On all the Kindle Book pages I looked at, there is a button on the right side for “Give As A Gift”. I followed that through and it seemed pretty straightforward to pay for the book, specify the person you want to give it to and then a note is sent to the recipient. You can make a wish list of your own and share it through facebook, twitter or e-mail. You can search for other people’s wish lists as well.
Worked pretty simply for me and a friend got a book he was wanting so I could verify how all this worked. I guess my friend should send a thank-you to Mr. Pettigrew.
Amazon.co.uk does not have ebook gifting for some reason. As Greg mentioned, the US store has had this functionality for several months.
Yesterday I gave a Kindle book as a gift to a friend who just got his first K. Worked fine for me too.
I just checked the FutureBook site and it is based in the UK. Maybe the “Give as a Gift” link isn’t active outside the US?
He is incorrect. I have gifted ebooks to my grandchildren. It is actually very easy.
And other electronic merchandise retailers have already solved this problem. For instance, Steam allows people to give electronic games by e-mail in just a few clicks.
Yes, Amazon ebook gifting so easy. B&N nook book a bit more complicated, but that is Barnes & Noble, things are always a bit more complicated there. But can easily get a B&N gift card to apply on ebook purchases (either an electronic card or a physical card, but I did not see a way to gift a specific ebook title/item. I remember last Christmas people were having a devil of a time with their gift cards online at B&N.
While not all of the various store allow you to give a specific book as a gift, they all allow you to give gift cards/vouchers AFAIK.