Amazon has a handy featured called “Give as a Gift” which you can use to send someone a Kindle book via email. For authors, this can be 
quite handy for book promotion purposes. If you can drive more sales to your Kindle edition by getting others to give it as a gift, the rank for your book’s sales page will improve and will 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!
Yep, it really is that simple. And we are using this feature to give away bonus books to the first 50 who register for the Nonfiction Writers Conference! Check it out here!
Hello. I have a gravitation of people & businesses who’ve signed up to purchase my book(s). This is a great idea if one doesn’t have fans on the edge of their seats, literally, to buy ones book(s).
I hadn’t seen this button on Amazon yet; thanks, Stephanie!
What I’d love to see is “You’re the author; gift this to someone without having to pay for it first.”
Of course, the first abuse of that would be to sell digital copies from our own websites and use Amazon’s network to fulfill the orders. Oops. Guess that’s not gonna happen.
How do you give multiple copies at once? It’s not obvious from the tool.
Hi Joel, It would be nice if we could gift copies of our own Kindle books via Amazon, but you’re right–Amazon wouldn’t like the abuse of that and quite frankly, they have no incentive to offer that service to authors. However, you can do that with Smashwords by creating a 100% off discount code. And unfortunately there is no bulk gift option (that I know of). If you need to gift multiple copies, you have to go through the process one at a time. I’ve been doing that for people who register for NFWC and it’s not as painful as it sounds! Just a minute or two per purchase if your credit card info is already on file.
Thanks Stephanie. I find this article very useful, especially your reply to Joel on how to use Smashwords to gift copies of Kindle books.
Does it cost anything the author to gift her Kindle book to the others? If yes, how much? Can authors also gift their paper books distributed on amazon.com and published by createspace.com?
Hi Lina, Good question! Yes, you still have to pay the retail price to gift a book. I don’t believe there is a way to gift your Kindle book without paying for it through Amazon, but you can do this if you distribute your book through Smashwords. You can create a discount code for 100% off and then provide that to readers. Hope that helps!
Hi Stephanie! Thanks for the article! In order to gift paperback books through Amazon, do you suggest using the discount codes available through seller central? I have been unable to gift my paperback books to readers this way (the codes when entered at checkout display as “invalid”) and I thought perhaps that discount codes wouldn’t work with books. Thanks for your help!
Great if you live in the States. Amazon.co.uk doesn’t allow this important service (in fact there are an amazing number of differences between the .com and .co.uk offerings).
That is interesting to know, Dave. I wonder why??
I observe an author pays the retail in order to gift a Kindle book. If you do a “Kindle Book Giveaway Promotion,” does the author pay any costs (pretty obvious question in light of the fact that no significant production costs are involved).
I know this reply is nearly 4 months later and you’ve probably discovered your answer, but on the off chance you’ve not: the main cost to an author during an Amazon ebook giveaway lies in the fact that no royalties are generated for your ebook for the duration of that promotion.
I’m assuming that, as author promos are limited to 7 days per quarter, being allowed to gift your ebook without cost would run crosswise of your KDP agreement…and Amazon’s profits.
I’d just be happy if Amazon increased the number of days a promotion was allowed to run, to at least 14 days…but that would interfere with their bottom line1andwell, I suppose.
Interesting thoughts on book give aways as a marketing strategy.. In October 2014 I offered my then recently published book, “Clouds In The Wind” on a 5 day give away promotion.. During those 5 days there were 9,822 downloads off Amazon. Since reverting the price to it’s regular $3.99 and continuing with the same volume of awareness posts across a whole range of social media, I think I have sold less than a one hundredth of that number. But it’s always difficult to tell because on downloads that generate a monetary transaction Amazon apply a different set of reporting rules.
Stephanie-
Great intro on Amazon Giveaways, although for me, the “Set up a giveaway” button disappears during KDP Select free promos…
I’ve been running quite a few ebook giveaways and have some data (and gotchas) for the items mentioned above. You can read more at my blog post:
http://querysharkbait.com/amazon-ebook-giveaways/
-deb
I want to send a free book to the editor so she can see how all this works and check copy. I am the author, and I’m logged into kdp. I press the link to ‘see the book on amazon’ then hit the gray button on the right to ‘send as gift’. A form comes up asking for the email address. I add that. Then the only option is to ‘place order’ when I hit that it asks for billing information. I.e. free to the recipient but I pay for it. How can I do a test order so as to see the final product. Might be ok, not good, but ok, to pay for this once, but not ok as chances are I will have to iterate the process!!
How do I gift an ebook at the purchase of another product on Amazon?
I would like to give away a free ebook with the purchase of another book that is available on amazon. How do I do that?