For the first time, Amazon.com is letting people give the gift of e-books this holiday shopping season. Until now, consumers had to have a Kindle e-reader or app to purchase e-books. Now the only catch is the recipient needs an e-mail address.
It’s a natural progression in the evolution of Amazon’s digital platform. Kindle e-books can be read on Kindle hardware and free apps for iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, Mac, PC, BlackBerry and Android-based devices. With such a diversity of platforms on which to read Kindle e-books, it makes sense for Amazon to bolster its revenue by allowing anyone and everyone to send them as gifts.
Personalized Digital Gifts
Customers can choose an e-book in the Kindle Store, select Give as a Gift and send to the recipient’s e-mail address. Once the order is executed, the gift is delivered immediately via e-mail and the recipient can redeem it at the Kindle Store. So long as the recipient has a Kindle or a device with a Kindle app, he or she can read the book.
“This is a no-brainer. I may want to give someone who I know has a Kindle — maybe I bought it for them last year — a gift. Until now I had no way of doing that,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Gartner.
“For a lot of people, it’s not about a gift certificate,” he added. “I want to send you a book. Apple made that relatively easy early on through iTunes. I could send you music and you may have to sign up for an iTunes account, but I could send you music. Now I don’t have to worry about whether I have a Kindle or you have a Kindle; I can really send a personalized gift to a Kindle user.”
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