Amazon ‘Give As A Gift’ Feature = Nook Advantage
When you buy someone a book as a gift, you have experienced one of two things: a) you heard from that person that they specifically wanted that book or b) you have read the book yourself and know they would like it.
So how does this relate to the new feature offered by Amazon and its Kindle e-book reader? Well, now you can use Amazon to send an e-book as a gift to anyone who has an email address, according to Engadget.com. Unfortunately, if that recipient owns a Nook, they will have to find another way of reading it or use a hack to read it on their existing device.
Amazon rightly claims that they are the first in the industry to offer a gift-giving service such as this, but does that really matter? We don’t think so. In fact, it seems that the new Amazon service will only serve to point out the many advantages of the Barnes and Noble Nook.
As of December, Barnes and Noble will be accepting their gift cards for purchases of their e-books. In other words, you can give someone a Barnes and Noble gift card and let them choose the book of their choice. If you have already purchased and read the book they want, you can use your Nook to simply lend it to them for free. The only case in which Amazon’s new e-book gift giving will apply is if you want to give a specific book (that you don’t own) in order to avoid looking “lazy” by giving a gift card.
I would rather go to either bookstore and choose the book of my choice with a gift card, but I’m not sensitive when it comes to receiving gifts. If you want to show someone you really care, and they have an Amazon Kindle, you should use the new Amazon “Give as a Gift” service and buy them the book they really want, send it to their email, and on Christmas morning, give them a card that says “check your email.” If they own a Nook, or any other e-book reader on the market, just give them a Barnes and Noble Gift Card.
The Nook supports many different formats that will allow you to view e-books you have purchased from places other than Barnes and Noble. The Amazon Kindle does not support as many formats as the Nook and generally takes the Apple approach of limiting the formats that will function on the device.
The addition of the “Give as a Gift” service will probably help Amazon with holiday sales, but their lack of a book lending function will hurt them in the long run. The new Amazon function will improve the Kindle’s performance immediately, considering Christmas is less than a month-and-a-half away and people want to make their loved ones happy, but I would rather have my sister lend me a book she already owns and give me a new Xbox Kinect game on Christmas morning.
This article is obviously written by someone who is ill-informed or has a clear bias for Nook and/or B&N. From someone who has both the Kindle and the Nook in the household, and who uses both devices and companies from a reader’s perspetive as well as a publishers, I give a slight advantage to Kindle. Even though I have to use a different e-Book format (PRC) to publish on Amazon, the ability to give a specific book as a gift is a serious advantage. My wife, who uses the Nook, asked for a Nook book for Christmas, and was disappointed to learn that I could only give her a gift card instead of a specific title, which she said seems less personal. I agree. However, the gift option via Amazon is even more critical from a publisher’s perspective because it allows me to run promotions and send the books to the recipient directly from Amazon complete with DRM protection so that I don’t end up with people copying my e-Book files and posting them for consumption. I give Amazon this tip of the hat grudgingly, because I do not agree with the fascist manner in which they have restricted author postingings in their forums (which B&N doesn’t even have directly in their site); but that is another story.
Amazon does have a book lending feature. And you can read content from many other sites. And, if the recipient doesn’t like the ebook you thoughtfully picked out for them, they can return it for credit and buy something else, just like any other book you might buy for someone.
While each ereader on the market has its advantages and limitations, I fail to see how being able to gift a Kindle book can be criticised.
I appreciate the comment. Yes, Amazon very recently added a book sharing feature, but that too has its limitations. For example, the publishers of the e-books are the ones who decide whether they can be shared or not. Plus, the sharing system only allows you to lend a book for 14 days before it must be “returned.” I guess it is less of a criticism of the Kindle book gifting feature and more of an observation that Amazon has been lagging behind, not to mention acting like the gift giving feature is some incredibly unique and fresh idea. The only reason it works is because e-books are one of the only gifts you can literally email to someone.
Likewise, these limitations exist for Nook “lending” as well.
See: http://gizmodo.com/5388168/dont-get-too-excited-about-the-nooks-lending-feature