Did Audible Launch a New Gifting Option?

26.11.2013 Nate Hoffelder 3 Comments

The Bookseller is reporting this morning that Audible, Amazon’s audiobook distributor and retailer, has launched a new gifting option:

Audible has launched a gifting service for the first time, allowing customers to purchase content and membership deals as gifts for others.

The Amazon-owned audiobook service said the service has been begun to capitalise on Christmas demand for gifting options.

Customers will have the option of using the buying a specific title, and sending a code to the recipient to allow them to download it, or buying a gift membership of three, six of 12 month’s subscription to the Audible.

This is good news, but is it actually new news?

I have checked the relevant FAQ pages in the Help section and it appears that Audible UK has offered these gifting since at least 2011. I can also confirm, based on when Audible.com’s FAQ was updated, that the site has had the gifting options mentioned above since at least February of this year.

Sorry that I cannot be more specific, but I don’t use Audible and I’m not familiar with all of the parts of the service.

At this point it looks like The Bookseller got it wrong, but if there is a story I would like to report on it. Does anyone know if Audible launched a new gifting option, or is this a non-story?