by Rachelle de Bretagne

Created on: August 01, 2010

It's a real shame, with today's technology, that Amazon haven't been forward thinking enough to understand the value of being able to buy books for friends. One would think that with so many years of trading on the Internet, the trend of buying books as gifts produces a huge market. When the Kindle was introduced, it would seem a natural conclusion after all these years of experience, that Amazon would have added the ability for people to buy Kindle books for their friends based on the popularity of buying books as gifts. Of course, one can buy traditional books though many avid readers are now turning to other means of reading with the Amazon Kindle and other reading devices. This means that instead of buying books of a traditional paper variety, book lovers would benefit from being able to buy Kindle books for friends to carry on the tradition of sharing great literature.

The problem with Kindle is that although gift vouchers are available for friends to use, it isn't quite the same as receiving a gift. The difference is that the Kindle user must choose their own gift. No more surprise presents for book lovers if they use a Kindle, since purchases cannot be made for users whose Kindle is not registered to the purchaser. Although one can see the benefits of this protection of copyright, it's a little shortsighted that friends cannot simply exchange registration details and simply buy for a specific registered Kindle other than their own.

If they attempt to do so, what happens is that the credit card used must match the Kindle to which the book is downloaded and it would certainly create reason to lose friends, were you to ask to borrow their credit card to make a purchase for them!

Other devices have the same problem and what seems to need to be addressed is the introduction of the ability to buy a Kindle book to be downloaded onto a specific machine, without the payment method coming into question. A verification page, which gives the name of the user to get over the possibility or erroneous entry of numbers would satisfy the buying public and Amazon alike, since they would then have a clear record of which Kindle has which literature.

Unfortunately, this slipped through the design stages of the software, and now Kindle users have little option when it comes to sharing their favorite books. Traditionally, swap meets for books have always been part and parcel of book reading mentality. It's a natural thing for friends to pass books they have read to people

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