How to Gift eBooks: A Comprehensive Guide for All eReader Brands
Books are among the most popular gifts of all. They are especially given at Christmas. Year after year, more than a third of all gift-givers choose books – and they’re a top choice for other occasions too. This trend hasn’t changed even in the digital age. However, with more and more people owning an eReader and preferring eBooks, many wonder how to actually gift a digital book.
For a traditional paper book, you simply buy it at a bookstore (or online), take it home, and wrap it in gift paper. Done. Unfortunately, it’s a bit more complicated with an eBook. You can’t simply purchase an eBook as a gift and pass it on because you don’t own the rights to the file. Instead, you’re usually just buying a license when you purchase an eBook, which allows you to read it on multiple eBook readers, smartphones, tablets, etc. (that you own), and make private copies. Transferring the reading license to someone else isn’t possible.
Gift Card or Direct Purchase
If you want to gift an eBook, you’ll need to take a different approach than with paper books. There are now two ways to do this:
- You can either opt for a gift card, or
- use the gifting feature at eBook.de, a subsidiary of Hugendubel (described below).
Gift cards are available from virtually all providers. They can be purely virtual or in a credit card format. For festive occasions, the latter is probably the better choice.
Here you can get gift cards from various providers:
- Amazon (for Kindle eBooks only)
- eBook.de
- Thalia
- Hugendubel
Note: If you’re giving a gift card, you should know whether the recipient owns an Amazon eBook reader (Kindle) or another model. If it’s a Kindle device, they can typically only read eBooks purchased from Amazon. A Thalia gift card won’t help in such cases. And vice versa: a Tolino owner won’t benefit from a Kindle eBook. So, before buying, discreetly find out which brand eReader the recipient has.
Until the end of 2014, there was also the option to buy so-called eBookCards. As the name suggests, these were gift cards for specific eBooks. Unfortunately, their success in bookstores wasn’t great, which led to the service being discontinued at the beginning of 2015.
Gift a Kindle eBook
After a long period when Amazon didn’t allow gifting eBooks, this changed in June 2019. If you want to gift an eBook, simply open the page of the title in the Amazon store and choose the option “Buy for others”.
On the next screen, when finalizing the purchase, you can select the recipient to whom the eBook will be directly sent. Alternatively, you can opt not to specify a recipient, and send the eBook or gift code yourself at a later time.
But be careful: eBook gifts can only be redeemed by people in the same country. As a German customer, you can’t gift eBooks to someone with an Austrian account.
The second option for gifting a book for Kindle is the aforementioned Amazon gift card. It’s best to choose the Kindle design for this, set the gift amount to the exact price of the title, and add the book as a personalized message.
Gift eBooks Individually
For Tolino, PocketBook, and all other eReader brands aside from Amazon, eBook.de offers its own gifting feature. This works entirely digitally (i.e., without a gift card), but has the advantage that you can gift the actual eBook you have in mind, not just a self-chosen amount of money.
Note: Competitors now also offer similar options:
Before you can give a digital book, you need to register for free at eBook.de. Once that’s done, open the desired title.
Gifting button at eBook.de
Now click on the “Gift” button. You’ll then be redirected to enter the recipient’s details. You can also set the date on which the eBook gift should be sent.
The recipient receives an email like this.
After that, choose your payment method to complete the gift purchase. As the buyer, you typically receive an email confirmation within 30 minutes. The actual delivery of the gift, however, only takes place on the selected day. It looks like what’s shown in the picture to the left.
The recipient can then follow one of the two links to add the eBook to an existing account or set up a new one. Hopefully, they’ll be as delighted as the lady in the image!
The title ultimately lands automatically in their list of eBooks and is marked as a gift even later on.
