Kindle Question - Gifting Books

[HockeyMomNH]

My DSis has a Kindle and I was just looking at books on Amazon and wondering if I could buy her one for her birthday next week. I don't know how hard it is to download books from there as I don't have an e-reader myself. Has anyone ordered books from there? It looks like there might be special software? Does that mean she would need to download to the computer first?

Thanks for any help!

 

[yoopermom]

No, she won't have to download it to her computer first, it'll go right to her Kindle, but what you need to buy is an Amazon giftcard (I believe you can send it electronically or print it out) and then she can put it towards the book of her choosing. What I did this Christmas was print out the cover of whatever book(s) I thought the person might enjoy, and include it with the giftcard (of course I had to buy Barnes and Noble ones for the Nook users, Amazon ones for the Kindle users, and Apple Itunes ones for the Ipad users, too many competing technologies ).

Terri

 

[HockeyMomNH]

No, she won't have to download it to her computer first, it'll go right to her Kindle, but what you need to buy is an Amazon giftcard (I believe you can send it electronically or print it out) and then she can put it towards the book of her choosing. What I did this Christmas was print out the cover of whatever book(s) I thought the person might enjoy, and include it with the giftcard (of course I had to buy Barnes and Noble ones for the Nook users, Amazon ones for the Kindle users, and Apple Itunes ones for the Ipad users, too many competing technologies ).

Terri

Thanks for the reply.

I was looking specifically to buy her the Unofficial Guide to DW. There is an option to "give as a gift" I wonder if that would work so that I could pay for it and she could just download it. I do like the idea of printing the cover, or maybe I could just send the link.

I did get her a Kindle gift card for Christmas. I found it at Lowes, of all places!

All the different technologies have me confused!

 

[RitaE]

If you click "give this as a gift" what she gets is an email notification that you sent her a book gift and then the book you selected is offered as your suggestion of what you think she would like to read. She's free to purchase something different if she doesn't like the book you picked out. It never tells you what she actually bought. Sorry, I can't remember the exact wording of that email.

You really don't get anything to wrap up or present to her personally using that method. If that's what you want a gift card would be a better option.

As far as downloading the books, it is just like any other Amazon book she purchases for her Kindle. It can be sent wirelessy or downloaded to her computer and transferred - however she prefers to do it.

 

[yoopermom]

Thanks Rita, for explaining it better than I did . I changed to my method because my DM (who I admit, is easily confused by technology) thought she "had" to purchase the book that I had picked out for her when I did it the other way (she didn't understand the "recommendation" part obviously).

Terri

 

[HockeyMomNH]

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks so much!

 

[Suz D]

One thing you want to remember when you're doing this is that you can specify what day the get the e-mail but not what time. I wanted to give specific books to a friend, but didn't want them to know until we opened our gifts. I just printed out which ones I was giving her and then after we opened, I sent the e-mail.

You can also do that with music. It's actually really a fun gift!

 

[HockeyMomNH]

One thing you want to remember when you're doing this is that you can specify what day the get the e-mail but not what time. I wanted to give specific books to a friend, but didn't want them to know until we opened our gifts. I just printed out which ones I was giving her and then after we opened, I sent the e-mail.

You can also do that with music. It's actually really a fun gift!

Good to know. Thanks!