You Can Now Gift a Kindle eBook From the Manage Your Content & Devices Page

19.07.2017 Nate Hoffelder 6 Comments

Amazon customers have long had the option of buying a copy of an ebook as a gift simply by visiting a book’s listing on Amazon.com. Now we can do the same from our account pages.

A reader tipped me to a recent change to the Manage Your Content & Devices Page. (Thanks, Chad!) Amazon is now promoting the gifting option in a text banner:

Loved reading a book? Now share your happiness with your friends and loved ones by gifting it to them from Manage Your Content and Devices page.

You can give an ebook by clicking the 3-dot menu to the left of the title, and then selecting the "purchase a a gift" option.

This will bring up a purchase screen that, judging by the design, very few people have seen since this option was first made available years ago.

Seriously, that page looks like it was designed around 2005 or so. It looks nothing like any current page on Amazon.com, raising the question whether anyone is using this gifting feature.

Have you given a Kindle book as a gift?

What did you think of the process, and more importantly what about the giftee?

Recipients can exchange an unwanted ebook gift for an Amazon gift card of equal value. Have you? (I would, except I can’t recall ever getting a Kindle book as a gift.)

Comments

Carmen Webster Buxton July 19, 2017 um 11:49 pm

Why bother doing the development? Talk about solving a problem that doesn’t exist!

Frank July 20, 2017 um 10:00 am

Gifting an ebook seems pretty niche; I just give gift cards.

The gift page is the UI from a few years ago.

Anne July 20, 2017 um 11:47 am

I usually gift from the book page. Most of mine tend to be gifts for the nieces/nephews but I’ll occasionally gift a sale book if I’m pretty sure it’s of interest to the giftee and the odds are they haven’t seen the sale notice. I bought two daily deals for a brother just yesterday. He’s working 12 hour days and I knew there was no way he was aware of the sale. He texted me a thank you this morning.

Let me add a rant about Audible though. I used to gift both the digital book and audio version pretty frequently to one niece. That’s not happening any longer due to their recent decision to stop allowing gifts of specific books.

Miss M July 21, 2017 um 7:58 am

Much better than this update is the recent option to re-direct unused gifts. Over the years I’ve had several gifts I’ve sent that for one reason or another weren’t claimed – now you can filter under Gifts and it shows any Pending (unclaimed), then you can redirect/send those to your own email and use the exchange for gift card option for yourself. Much more useful/practical than gifting from the MYCD page, IMO.
I do gift occasionally, but as you pointed out the actual MYCD page is a mess…I try to avoid whenever possible. Hate having to return library books from there.