Amazon has a feature called “Give as a Gift” which you can use to send someone a Kindle ebook via email.
For authors, this can be quite useful for book promotion purposes.
When you drive more sales to your Kindle edition by giving it as a gift, the rank for your book’s sales page will improve and can ultimately lead to more visibility on Amazon, thus increasing your overall sales.
For example, let’s say you agree to speak at an event or conference and then ask the event host if they would be willing to give attendees a copy of your book in Kindle format. They agree to give a copy to all 100 attendees. The host would then go to Amazon and use the Give as a Gift feature, which will allow them to email a redemption code to each attendee, one at a time. Their attendees get a bonus, while you gain new readers, increase your sales, and improve your overall sales rank on Amazon!
You can also use this feature to deliver Kindle ebooks to your own audience, perhaps as part of a special promotion. Yes, you’ll have to invest in purchasing your own Kindle book to send to your audience, but the benefits can be worthwhile if you plan your campaign well. During this period you could drop your sale price down to $.99, or something lower than usual.
There are some caveats to this program, though. According to Amazon, the gift sale only impacts your sales rank if the gift is redeemed within 24 hours. Also, the gift option actually works like a credit and the recipient could choose to exchange the ebook for something else on Amazon.
However, we’ve done many of these campaigns and in our experience, most recipients are thrilled to receive a gift like this and accept it gladly.
Overall, this can be a powerful way to raise awareness for your title and gain new readers, which can also result in more reviews on your book’s sales page!
If you like this blog post, you’ll love our Author Toolkit with checklists, worksheets and templates for book marketing. Check it out!
Be warned that only authors in the US and India are allowed to gift their Amazon books, whether individually or for workshops.
I offered my book as a prize at a recent virtual conference form the US. No one was aware of this discriminatory policy because the other authors were American.
It was embarrassing. And all I could do was mail the winner a check for the price of my book. I’m pretty fed up with Amazon at this point. This rule makes it impossible for non-Americans or non-Indians to have a level playing field in marketing. It’s no good joining KDP from other countries, because they all defer to the US-only rule.