Kids / Multiple Kindle household question

[MrsPete]

The new Kindles (and the new prices) look great, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to buy one for each of my kids this Christmas. Thinking ahead, I'm not sure how to set up their accounts:

I have a Kindle, and it's easy: I have one account. It's hooked to my credit card. I buy books, and they're automatically charged to my card. Sometimes I let my kids buy books on my Kindle. No problems.

I know that I can have up to five Kindle-devices on my current account, and I'd like to hook my kids' Kindles to my account so they could download the books they want (and since they chose some of the books, I know they'd like to have them). I have well over 600 books, so hooking them to my account sounds like the cheap, practical route.

I hinted about this with my oldest child (age 17), and she feels strongly that she wouldn't want to be hooked to my account. She has a checking account /debit card, and she says she would want her account to be independent of mine. I'm not opposed to this, but it seems wasteful not to share the books I already have with the girls -- if I can do it.

Can we start with her Kindle registered "under my account", and then in a couple months change over to her debit card? If so, that'd give us the best of both worlds. Or in changing her over to her own account, would we have to wipe the Kindle clean and start her "fresh"?

Also, she has a debit card, not a credit card. Can a Kindle be set up with a debit card?

Next, my 14 year old, who is even more complicated . . . she doesn't have a debit card, and I don't plan to get her one 'til -- like her sister -- she's a senior in high school. Is it possible -- for now -- to set her up with a pre-paid VISA gift card and fund her book purchases with gift cards?

I'd welcome any hints on setting up a multiple-Kindle household. I've had my Kindle a long time and absolutely love it, but I feel a bit out of my element considering the logistics of tripling the Kindles in our household.

 

[ColoradoDisneyFreaks]

The new Kindles (and the new prices) look great, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to buy one for each of my kids this Christmas. Thinking ahead, I'm not sure how to set up their accounts:

I have a Kindle, and it's easy: I have one account. It's hooked to my credit card. I buy books, and they're automatically charged to my card. Sometimes I let my kids buy books on my Kindle. No problems.

I know that I can have up to five Kindle-devices on my current account, and I'd like to hook my kids' Kindles to my account so they could download the books they want (and since they chose some of the books, I know they'd like to have them). I have well over 600 books, so hooking them to my account sounds like the cheap, practical route.

I hinted about this with my oldest child (age 17), and she feels strongly that she wouldn't want to be hooked to my account. She has a checking account /debit card, and she says she would want her account to be independent of mine. I'm not opposed to this, but it seems wasteful not to share the books I already have with the girls -- if I can do it.

Can we start with her Kindle registered "under my account", and then in a couple months change over to her debit card? If so, that'd give us the best of both worlds. Or in changing her over to her own account, would we have to wipe the Kindle clean and start her "fresh"?

Also, she has a debit card, not a credit card. Can a Kindle be set up with a debit card?

Next, my 14 year old, who is even more complicated . . . she doesn't have a debit card, and I don't plan to get her one 'til -- like her sister -- she's a senior in high school. Is it possible -- for now -- to set her up with a pre-paid VISA gift card and fund her book purchases with gift cards?

I'd welcome any hints on setting up a multiple-Kindle household. I've had my Kindle a long time and absolutely love it, but I feel a bit out of my element considering the logistics of tripling the Kindles in our household.

The short answer to this is yes, you can. When my husband first got me my Kindle he also bought me a book as a starter, on his Amazon account. After about 3 months of me buying a book a week we decided to move me over to my own Amazon account because he got tired of getting the e-mails and having all of my books as recommendations in his Amazon account! I just followed the instructions on line, and was all set. It didn't wipe the books I had on there, but it did change all of my recommendations to books I'd already bought on the other account, so I had to fix those, but otherwise, very painless.

 

[hmacmahony]

We actually have eleven kindles on one account.
7 adults, 5 kids.
You can put as many kindles as you want onto one account...
BUT
You can only download a book so many times. But, since we all read different things, we have never, not once ran into this problem.
And most of us clear our kindles, and only keep a few things on the kindle, most of us archive everything.
So, we have never had to find out if you can only download something 6 times, or on 6 devices at the same time. No one has been able to answer that question for us.
It works for us, I will probably stick two more kids on there at christmas too.
We work off gift cards, we all will add gift cards onto the account, and keep track of what we spend. I happen to be the lead on the account, so I get all the emails.
We use a dead amazon account, one thats not linked to anyone, that way we just have a easy password and anyone can get on there when they need to.
So far we have had no problems.

 

[cats mom]

So, we have never had to find out if you can only download something 6 times, or on 6 devices at the same time. No one has been able to answer that question for us.

My understanding from asking that question on the kindle boards is that you can actually download a book an unlimited number of times, but it can only be on 6 devices at the same time (or whatever # the publisher has specified).

You can release new licenses, but it requires that all current device licenses be cleared, so you have to remove the book from every device it's on and then re-download again.

That could be a potential problem for whoever I bought one of my kindles from (e-bay) because while they de-registered it, they didn't reset it, so I have all the content they purchased.

A note on the special offers kindle: it used to be that with very few exceptions offers were one per device. So you could have multiple kindles registered on one account, and you would still get multiple unique codes, so you could take advantage of the same offer multiple times. But with the most recent offers, every kindle registered to an account has received the same code. So even if you bought 5 special offers kindles, you could only take advantage of one offer.

Hope that all makes sense. It can get complicated.

 

[AverageDiser]

You can have her on your account and still making her own purchases. My mom and I both use my account. When she wants to buy a book, she buys it on her own amazon account. Since there is no kindle on it, it asks where she wants it sent. E-mails it to me, and I just download it to her kindle. Easy-peasy, no financial hassles, and we still get to share books. Also, you can use a debit card, I refuse to own a credit card

Just noticed the question about your 14 yo, you can work that the same way, set up her own amazon acct, load the gift cards to it, and again email the books to your acct so you can load them to her kindle. It sounds like a hassle, but it honestly takes less than 30 seconds to click on the e-mail link and download the books, and it keeps everyone's money/gift cards, etc separate. HTH.

 

[RitaE]

Cat_Mom is correct. There is no limit to the number of times a book can be pulled down from the Cloud. Most books have a simultaneous device limit (default is 6) some publishers will restrict it to a smaller number.

Right now we also have all our family Kindles on one account. My oldest son (21 years old) is making noise about wanting his own too - I think he doesn't like me always seeing the books he buys, and he doesn't read many of my books anyway. I imagine he'll move to his own when he gets the Kindle Fire for Christmas.

 

[DVCLiz]

Mrs. Pete, here's how it has worked for me:

When I upgraded my original Kindle 1 to a Kindle 2, I gave the "old" Kindle to my youngest daughter. When I upgraded my Kindle 2 to a Kindle DX, I gave the Kindle 2 to my oldest daughter. All three shared the same account. They would have been 14 and 19 when I first got my Kindle, so 15 and 20 when they received their own Kindles.

DD15 was still reading mostly YA stuff. DD20 was reading mostly classics for her English literature major, along with a few of my typical middle-aged literary fiction general interest stuff (ie Water for Elephants, etc.) So we kept the same account and shared books we had any common interest in. I have to say I told them from the beginning that if they wanted to stay on my account they couldn't buy anything racy or smutty - I didn't want it on my account and they would have to buy that in paper if they so chose. LOL it hasn't been a problem - I just wanted that to be on record in case somebody got a sudden yen to build up an erotica collection on my dime.

So, because we don't have any content we would want to keep private from each other, a shared account has worked well. Also - BONUS!! - it's my credit card on the account and everyone has permission to buy whatever they'd like whenever they'd like. This also hasn't been a problem - we have always been a book-buying family and all I asked was that they not spend wildly on stocking up for the future, but buy and then read what they had purchased. Again, no problems in that area. I buy WAY more than they do!!!

DD20 took her Kindle away to school and we had no problems with that - the Kindle can download wherever she is from my Archives.

I was happy to see the new feature of Collections at some point along the way. I reorganized everything on all the Kindles so that we had a Collection named DD20's Books, DD17's Books, etc. They are welcome to download anything from any of my Collections, too, of course, but this way I don't have to have the Twilight or Hunger Games series cluttering up my nice list of books - they are all in separate Collections.

So, bottom line - for us it has been fine to share. No one had a preference about keeping their books private, so we didn't have the sharing issue. We've realized a small savings by not having to buy duplicates of certain titles (Libba Bray, The Hunger Games, Twilight, and certain other individual titles are ones that come to mind that both girls have read and would have bought separately).

 

[DVCLiz]

Part Two:

BUT - if your daughter really has a preference I would go ahead and set her up with her own account. Yes, you'll lose the sharing function, but you can always loan each other a specific title if lending is enabled, or she can check out the book for free from a digital library if she has a library card, or she can just know that that will occasionally be a disadvantage of not being on the family account. She can set up her own account with a debit card and an email address. If you have problems call Kindle Customer Service - I think people have been able to set up individual accounts just using gift cards. And, if you're giving it to her as a Christmas gift, an Amazon gift card tucked in the toe of her stocking makes a nice extra gift!!

My daughters are getting Fires for Christmas and I will let them decide if they want those to be on separate accounts. I'm thinking yes so we can all control what music and movies are stored, etc.

 

[DVCLiz]

Part Three:

There is an issue with shared accounts of any kind. Although we didn't have it with our Amazon/Kindle account, it did come up recently with a shared iTunes account. Both girls had been on the same one for years, and I have a separate one. Recently DD22 decided she wanted her own account, so they broke it up. I think DD22 made a new account and gave the current one to DD17 - I'm not sure because I stayed out of it haha. Somebody had to rebuy some music and redownload some CDs. I got a $100 iTunes gift card recently when I bought a new Mac so I offered that to my daughter to offset the cost of repurchasing some music.

We also have had a family Sirius/XM radio plan, and that continues to be shared. I give that to each girl as a Christmas present. At some time in the future they can each decide to split that away from our family plan, but that's just a matter of changing a credit card. So far they each have been happy to receive it as a gift!!

DD20 and I also have separate Audible.com accounts - I gave that to her as a Christmas present one year because I got a $100 Amamzon gift card with a year's Audible membership (which I used to buy myself a new Kindel!)

We share a family Hulu+ account, but DD20 has a separate Netflix account now, too.

That's probably more than you wanted to know haha, but since we are on the subject of shared accounts and I've been through all of these with my oldest daughter, I thought you might like to think about what you share as a family other than Kindle accounts in case you wanted to start planning to separate other accounts as well.

 

[ksloane]

We share our accounts and will continue to even after girls move out (one already has). I look at it like this. If I bought a book, I would have it on the shelf and my girls could read it if they wanted. I see no reason in the world for us each to buy the same books for the Kindle. But we try to set up everything possible frugally like that.

 

[Nicolepa]

Ok, here is a question I've been trying to figure out, maybe one of you can help. I pre-ordered several touches for Christmas. All of them but one, which I bought for my mother, will be on one account.

My question is about the one for my mother. I'd like to preload it with a certain book series when I give it to her. It is a free domain book. Is there a way to do that, since she won't be on my account? I know I can start sending books to the devices, which I have for the kids, but if I do that for her and then she transfers the Kindle to her account, will she lose all those books?

 

[Nicolepa]

The short answer to this is yes, you can. When my husband first got me my Kindle he also bought me a book as a starter, on his Amazon account. After about 3 months of me buying a book a week we decided to move me over to my own Amazon account because he got tired of getting the e-mails and having all of my books as recommendations in his Amazon account! I just followed the instructions on line, and was all set. It didn't wipe the books I had on there, but it did change all of my recommendations to books I'd already bought on the other account, so I had to fix those, but otherwise, very painless.

So if my husband moves his Kindle to his account, will we still be able to read each others books (w/o using the loan feature). I don't see it happening often, but I could see it.

 

[ksloane]

Ok, here is a question I've been trying to figure out, maybe one of you can help. I pre-ordered several touches for Christmas. All of them but one, which I bought for my mother, will be on one account.

My question is about the one for my mother. I'd like to preload it with a certain book series when I give it to her. It is a free domain book. Is there a way to do that, since she won't be on my account? I know I can start sending books to the devices, which I have for the kids, but if I do that for her and then she transfers the Kindle to her account, will she lose all those books?

does she already have an amazon account? If not, I was thinking you could create a free email somewhere to set it up, and then she could login to amazon and change her email to her real email after she got it?

 

[RitaE]

Ok, here is a question I've been trying to figure out, maybe one of you can help. I pre-ordered several touches for Christmas. All of them but one, which I bought for my mother, will be on one account.

My question is about the one for my mother. I'd like to preload it with a certain book series when I give it to her. It is a free domain book. Is there a way to do that, since she won't be on my account? I know I can start sending books to the devices, which I have for the kids, but if I do that for her and then she transfers the Kindle to her account, will she lose all those books?

The easiest thing to do would be download the file to your computer. Then when her Kindle arrives plug it into your computer with the USB cable. Move it from your computer to the documents folder of her Kindle.

However -- second way. If you didn't specify it as a "gift kindle" when you ordered it, it will arrive registered to your account with an email address. Email the document to that Kindle, wait for it to arrive, and then de-register it from your account.

 

[Nicolepa]

The easiest thing to do would be download the file to your computer. Then when her Kindle arrives plug it into your computer with the USB cable. Move it from your computer to the documents folder of her Kindle.

However -- second way. If you didn't specify it as a "gift kindle" when you ordered it, it will arrive registered to your account with an email address. Email the document to that Kindle, wait for it to arrive, and then de-register it from your account.

Thanks!

 

[MrsPete]

The short answer to this is yes, you can. When my husband first got me my Kindle he also bought me a book as a starter, on his Amazon account. After about 3 months of me buying a book a week we decided to move me over to my own Amazon account because he got tired of getting the e-mails and having all of my books as recommendations in his Amazon account! I just followed the instructions on line, and was all set. It didn't wipe the books I had on there, but it did change all of my recommendations to books I'd already bought on the other account, so I had to fix those, but otherwise, very painless.

Great! That's exactly what I needed to know: We'll "open" their Kindles through my existing account, download all the books they want . . . and then the oldest can switch her account over for the independence she wants . . . unless she decides it's smarter to stick with me and keep getting more free books (I mean, books for which I pay).

We use a dead amazon account, one thats not linked to anyone, that way we just have a easy password and anyone can get on there when they need to.
So far we have had no problems.

Now that makes sense. If both girls could be convinced to stick with my existing account, we could use my current Amazon account as a joint book account . . . and I could make a new account with my work email for non-Kindle purchases.

A note on the special offers kindle: it used to be that with very few exceptions offers were one per device. So you could have multiple kindles registered on one account, and you would still get multiple unique codes, so you could take advantage of the same offer multiple times.

I hadn't considered that, and since I haven't seen the special offers, I have no idea whether I care about this or not. Still, it's good to have it in the back of my mind. Thanks.

You can have her on your account and still making her own purchases. My mom and I both use my account. When she wants to buy a book, she buys it on her own amazon account. Since there is no kindle on it, it asks where she wants it sent. E-mails it to me, and I just download it to her kindle. Easy-peasy, no financial hassles, and we still get to share books. Also, you can use a debit card, I refuse to own a credit card

Just noticed the question about your 14 yo, you can work that the same way, set up her own amazon acct, load the gift cards to it, and again email the books to your acct so you can load them to her kindle. It sounds like a hassle, but it honestly takes less than 30 seconds to click on the e-mail link and download the books, and it keeps everyone's money/gift cards, etc separate. HTH.

Oh, I know what you mean. I know that when I purchase ebooks now, I see a direction on where it's to be sent . . . but since I have only one Kindle/one account, I just ignore it, knowing it'll go to the default. Good to know.

Cat_Mom is correct. There is no limit to the number of times a book can be pulled down from the Cloud. Most books have a simultaneous device limit (default is 6) some publishers will restrict it to a smaller number.

But with three of us, this shouldn't be a problem.

We share our accounts and will continue to even after girls move out (one already has). I look at it like this. If I bought a book, I would have it on the shelf and my girls could read it if they wanted. I see no reason in the world for us each to buy the same books for the Kindle. But we try to set up everything possible frugally like that.

Yes, that would be my preference as well . . . but, being 17, she doesn't always value frugality above independence. I want to understand the options completely, and I'll let her decide how she wants to register her Christmas toy.

My question is about the one for my mother. I'd like to preload it with a certain book series when I give it to her. It is a free domain book. Is there a way to do that, since she won't be on my account? I know I can start sending books to the devices, which I have for the kids, but if I do that for her and then she transfers the Kindle to her account, will she lose all those books?

Does she know how to use a Kindle? I'm thinking that although it might be nice for her to turn it on, and -- WOW! My favorite book is already here! -- it'd also be nice to use that book as a tutorial to teach her how to load books herself.

So if my husband moves his Kindle to his account, will we still be able to read each others books (w/o using the loan feature). I don't see it happening often, but I could see it.

Speaking only for myself, I'd just share an account with my husband -- we'd be paying with the same credit card forever anyway.


THANKS TO ALL FOR HELP WITH THIS QUESTION!

 

[Sandy321]

adding my 2 cents and experience

My mom, dd 14, and I share an account. I have a debit card, mom has her credit card all on the account - what I do is buy "gift cards" debiting the correct CC# - then I put that amount in the account - usually I keep $25 on our account, that way if mom or DD or I see something - we just buy it - and it does come to my email so I know where and how money is spent.

Also I started collecting free books as soon as I ordered mom's kindle - before it arrived -
Just set up your account!

It works for us. (oh, and one time, the first time I got a free book - started reading it and was SHOCKED at *ahem that it was a little too risque than I had been led to believe - man did I scramble to get that book scrubbed before my mom discovered it!!! I now read the descriptions and reviews of the free books a bit more carefully! lol )

So consider using the gift card option.

Also - my niece wanted on our account, but when she found out about the money she didnt want to share the account, but she wanted a few specific books - I have calibre - so I put books into collections on calibre - then I transfered books from my calibre into a folder, and then moved them to a flash drive - which I gave her - so she uploaded the flash drive on her Ipad...

calibre is a free and easy (since I'm really technology challenged when I say easy - it is) however, you do have to read the user manual - well its an interactive youtube I think - and again, mobilereads.com and kindleboard.com are also very helpful if I run into any challenges!

http://calibre-ebook.com/download
(on the top you can see a demo of calibre)

http://www.mobileread.com/

 

[Sandy321]

My experience with my mom -

she wanted the kindle, she watched DD and I look, and read about the Kindle, and the user manual online - she heard and felt our excitement -

when her kindle came, we set it up with books - it took us a couple of weeks to figure out how to set up "collections" on our kindles - and when we were with mom the next time, I thought DD had set mom's kindle into collections...

wrong - for some reason we set the collections - but her books werent going into them nice and neat... we never did figure it out, as her kindle had other problems Amazon replaced it -

Now that we have sorted her books into collections (biography, mystery, Christian, Bestsellers, Non Fiction - and currently reading, there's probably more, but you get the gist) She is much happier, it has taken her longer to be comfortable with her kindle, but she still loves it on vacation.... and preloading it with books worked best for us.

 

[Nicolepa]

Does she know how to use a Kindle? I'm thinking that although it might be nice for her to turn it on, and -- WOW! My favorite book is already here! -- it'd also be nice to use that book as a tutorial to teach her how to load books herself. Speaking only for myself, I'd just share an account with my husband -- we'd be paying with the same credit card forever anyway.


THANKS TO ALL FOR HELP WITH THIS QUESTION!

My mom is very computer literate so I'm sure she won't have a problem figuring it all out. The collection has about 70 books, it's a series from her childhood. She would never download them all, but I know she would love to have them.

As for my husband, I'm sure we could share but he will forget to log into my account and I worry it will cause more problems than it solves. I we will have to figure that out once he gets his. I can always read his books off his ipad/him off mine if we need to. It's not a huge deal.

 

[DVCLiz]

Mrs. Pete, make sure your daughter understands that:

Although it is possible to be on your account, download the books she wants onto her Kindle, and then deregister from your account, and reregister to her own new account,
the books won't be accessible to her if she does anything other than read them.

By that I mean if she reads something, decides to delete it from her device or try to send it back to Archives, it won't go to the Archives of her new account - it will be gone for good.

It's dicey as to whether it's "legal" to do this - it's clearly against Amazon's TOS but I also have had it explained and sanctioned by an Amazon employee who walked a friend through it with my Kindle when she first bought her own instead of borrowing one of mine. She probably has at least a hundred books from my account on her Kindle.