The Holiday Season Is Coming and You Can Gift E-Books...

As the holiday season swiftly approaches, I began to ponder about how does one give an e-book to someone else as a gift?  

Having received my first Kindle last Christmas, I am still very a much a novice at using it.  Mind you I have been learning and I'm enjoying it immensely.  But I'll talk more about e-books vs print in another post.  For now, I wanted to focus on those of us who want to get an e-book for someone we know who has either a Kindle or a Nook.   How would one go about purchasing one without having it arrive too soon?  

Well, with the recent release of our latest Para-Earth book (The Vampyre Blogs - Coming Home) I found myself rewarding some of our beta-readers with a free copy of the finished product in whatever form they wished (trade paperback, Nook, Kindle, PDF, Smashwords).  Most requested a signed trade paperback, but a couple asked for the Kindle version.

So I headed over to Amazon, got into my account, and pulled up "The Vampyre Blogs - Coming Home".  Once there I quickly found the "Give As A Gift" button and clicked it.  From there I was taken to another screen which asked me to sign into my Amazon account, which I did.  From there I was taken to a final screen 

This screen asked only for the e-mail address of the recipient I was sending this book to AND what day I wanted it delivered.  It was the option of a delivery date that really caught my eye.  Now some of you might be thinking, "Duh, you never noticed this before?"  And the answer is "Obviously, I didn't.  I rarely gave e-books as gifts to anyone before, even though I'm an author.  Most of my readers buy the books for themselves and hardly anyone in my family owns a Nook or Kindle."  So yes, this was brand new to me and very exciting.  

I quickly went over to Barnes and Noble, opened an account with them and found they too had the same kind of delivery option.  (It's set up pretty much same so I'm not sharing more screen caps for it).  

So now I have this huge new avenue for holiday shopping before me.  And with Black Friday and Cyber Monday looming on the horizon, I thought it important to share these options with all of you. Some of you may have known about all this, but for those (like me) who didn't you now have more options when it comes to shopping for gifts.  I personally love the idea of having a book to place in someone's 'Cyber Stocking', or put an actual envelope in a stocking/gift box in a real stocking...

or under a tree...

or next to a dreidel...

and of course, let's not forget those who have a birthday around these holidays and could use a present that's meant strictly as a birthday present and not "two presents in one"...

...informing them to check their e-mail for a gift.

The holiday season can be a rough time for people both because of finances and trying to figure out what to get someone, especially if that someone is in another country or across the states which makes the shipping costs another concern.

So for anyone (like me) who didn't know about this option, now you do.  And the best part is you can do that kind of shopping right now instead of waiting for the big rush.  The e-book will not arrive before the date you set. 

Of course, being an author I'm going to shamelessly promote our books by providing links below so you can visit our author pages on Amazon as well as Barnes and Noble, where all our books are listed and you can choose whichever one(s) you'd like to gift to the readers in your life.

KINDLE USERS:

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_ebooks_1?ie=UTF8&text=Allan+Krummenacker&search-alias=digital-text&field-author=Allan+Krummenacker&sort=relevancerank

NOOK USERS:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/allan+krummenacker?_requestid=717449

Thanks for tuning in and don't be afraid to leave suggestions or ideas about gifting books that I overlooked in this post, in the comments section below.  Until next time, take care and keep writing.