by Bruce Tyson

Created on: August 01, 2010

Amazon users send books and other gifts directly to friends and family members all the time so when they discover they cannot do this with Kindle books, their shock and dismay is understandable.

The system Amazon has in place for purchasing Kindle books requires that the book must be registered to the Kindle user that purchased it. Amazon allows users to associate up to six Kindle devices to each account and allows access to every Kindle book purchase to each one of those Kindles. This means that if your gift recipient has a Kindle that is registered to your account, you can easily give the Kindle book to them. This option has a couple obvious drawbacks including allowing someone else access to your Amazon account and the fact that you could only give five people Kindle books as gifts. Besides, sharing a Kindle book between devices does not have the same appeal as actually giving a gift.

Those Amazon users wishing to give the gift of a Kindle book have only one really practical option: giving an Amazon gift card. Some gift-givers, however, contend that the Amazon gift card solution does not provide the same satisfaction since they cannot choose what book to send to their recipient (in this case, recipients would choose their own Amazon Kindle book). Furthermore, an Amazon gift card can pay for anything on Amazon, so those who have their heart set on giving a book, may end up giving a gas grill or a DVD movie instead. Still, does it really matter what a people do with gift cards they receive? After all, the thought counts more than the actual gift, right?

Some people will say that the inability to drop ship Kindle books to gift recipients represents a flawed Amazon approach that breaks with the traditional ability Amazon users have to send gifts to people around the world. Still, in a world where stringent and aggressive government laws favoring intellectual property holders leave parties vulnerable to litigation at every level of the supply chain, the reluctance of Amazon to enable the loose distribution of content is understandable.

The convenience of Kindle books change the landscape of gift giving and book reading altogether. For example, traditional book swaps where people purchase books and then trade them among the group are a thing of the past when it comes to Kindle. Although technology may develop in the future that will make Kindle books more like their physical counterparts, current Amazon policy will likely remain in place for some time: no giving, no sharing, and no swapping unless you want to buy Kindles for all your friends in your name.

Sources:

Amazon. "Giving Kindles and Kindle Content." Amazon . http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html? nodeId=200375750 (accessed August 1, 2010).

Learn more about this author, Bruce Tyson.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.