Tag Archive: gifting


Gifting E-books…

Filed under: About Writing, Personal, Uncategorized — 2 Comments
December 20, 2019

This entry may seem to be a repeat but every year I get asked about how to gift e-books to someone. So here you all are and I hope everyone takes advantage since giving someone a tale they will love can be priceless sometimes…

Okay gang, the big day is drawing near and you still want to get a few more gifts but don’t know what to buy, or don’t want to go out into the stores which have already pulled down half of their displays and are lining up Spring stuff. What to do, what to do… how about giving someone a good book to read on their Kindle? It’s fast, easy, and you can have it delivered on Christmas Day and know it will arrive on time…


Didn’t know you could do this? Neither did I for the longest time. I only found out a couple of years ago when we released “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home”. I found myself rewarding some of our beta-readers with a free copy of the finished product in whatever form they wished (trade paperback, Kindle, PDF).  Most requested a signed trade paperback, but a couple asked for the Kindle version.

So I headed over to Amazon, got into my account, and pulled up “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home”.  Once there I quickly found the “Give As A Gift” button and clicked it.  From there I was taken to another screen which asked me to sign into my Amazon account, which I did.  From there I was taken to a final screen

This screen asked only for the e-mail address of the recipient I was sending this book to AND what day I wanted it delivered.  It was the option of a delivery date that really caught my eye.  Now some of you might be thinking, “Duh, you never noticed this before?”  And the answer is “Obviously, I didn’t.  I rarely gave e-books as gifts to anyone before, even though I’m one of the authors.  Most of my readers buy the books for themselves and hardly anyone in my family owns a Nook or Kindle.”  So yes, this was  new to me and very exciting.

So now I have this huge new avenue for last minute holiday shopping before me, which I thought it important to share these options with all of you. Some of you may have known about all this, but for those (like me) who didn’t you now have more options when it comes to shopping for gifts.  I personally love the idea of having a book to place in someone’s ‘Cyber Stocking’.

So for anyone who didn’t know about this option, now you do.  And the best part is you can do that kind of shopping right now.  The e-book will not arrive before the date you set.

Of course, being an author I’m going to shamelessly promote our books by providing links below so you can visit our author pages on Amazon, where all our books are listed and you can choose whichever one(s) you’d like to gift to the readers in your life.

Here are the links for our Para-Earth Series:

US KINDLE USERS:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KT9C559?ref=series_rw_dp_labf

UK KINDLE USERS:

CANADA KINDLE USERS:

And for fans of Helen’s new “Forever Detective Series” which blends noir mystery and the supernatural here are the links to those books:

Thanks for tuning in and don’t be afraid to leave suggestions or ideas about gifting books that I overlooked in this post, in the comments section below.  Until next time, take care and keep writing.
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Gifting E-Books…

Filed under: Para-Earth Books, Uncategorized — 12 Comments
December 21, 2018

Okay gang, the big day is drawing near and you still want to get a few more gifts but don’t know what to buy, or don’t want to go out into the stores which have already pulled down half of their displays and are lining up Spring stuff. What to do, what to do… how about giving someone a good book to read on their Kindle? It’s fast, easy, and you can have it delivered on Christmas Day and know it will arrive on time…


Didn’t know you could do this? Neither did I for the longest time. I only found out a couple of years ago when we released “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home”. I found myself rewarding some of our beta-readers with a free copy of the finished product in whatever form they wished (trade paperback, Kindle, PDF).  Most requested a signed trade paperback, but a couple asked for the Kindle version.

So I headed over to Amazon, got into my account, and pulled up “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home”.  Once there I quickly found the “Give As A Gift” button and clicked it.  From there I was taken to another screen which asked me to sign into my Amazon account, which I did.  From there I was taken to a final screen

This screen asked only for the e-mail address of the recipient I was sending this book to AND what day I wanted it delivered.  It was the option of a delivery date that really caught my eye.  Now some of you might be thinking, “Duh, you never noticed this before?”  And the answer is “Obviously, I didn’t.  I rarely gave e-books as gifts to anyone before, even though I’m one of the authors.  Most of my readers buy the books for themselves and hardly anyone in my family owns a Nook or Kindle.”  So yes, this was  new to me and very exciting.

So now I have this huge new avenue for holiday shopping before me.  And with Black Friday and Cyber Monday looming on the horizon, I thought it important to share these options with all of you. Some of you may have known about all this, but for those (like me) who didn’t you now have more options when it comes to shopping for gifts.  I personally love the idea of having a book to place in someone’s ‘Cyber Stocking’.

So for anyone who didn’t know about this option, now you do.  And the best part is you can do that kind of shopping right now.  The e-book will not arrive before the date you set.

Of course, being an author I’m going to shamelessly promote our books by providing links below so you can visit our author pages on Amazon, where all our books are listed and you can choose whichever one(s) you’d like to gift to the readers in your life.

US KINDLE USERS:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KT9C559?ref=series_rw_dp_labf

UK KINDLE USERS:
CANADA KINDLE USERS:

 

Thanks for tuning in and don’t be afraid to leave suggestions or ideas about gifting books that I overlooked in this post, in the comments section below.  Until next time, take care and keep writing.
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More About Gifting E-books…

Filed under: About Writing — 3 Comments
December 3, 2016

A short while ago, I posted about gifting e-books and how simple it was.  For those who missed that entry, I’ll briefly recap the basic idea here.  When one goes to Barnes and Noble or Amazon, you have the option of ‘gifting’ an e-book to someone and having a notice sent to their e-mail that they have a new book waiting for them.  The e-mail will also provide a link so that person can claim their gift.  Pretty straightforward and simple right?  Of course it is.  But there’s also an added feature that allows you to determine when that e-mail goes out to the recipient.  You can schedule the day that e-mail goes out so they can be notified of the present on a specific day such as a birthday…

Christmas…

Hannukah…

or whatever the special occasion is.

*To see the full entry click here: http://allankrummenacker.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-holiday-season-is-coming-and-you.html

However, there was one little feature I did not mention at the time I posted that entry and that is, any sales made as gifts will NOT be reflected in your sales report.

Why?  Because until the gift is actually claimed by the recipient the sale is not considered FINALIZED.  I only found out about this recently myself when a person who had won a copy of “The Vampyre Blogs – Coming Home” in a poetry contest run by my fellow author/blogger Aurora Jean Alexander (blog link: https://aurorajalexander.wordpress.com/).  I knew the sale had taken place from my end and that an e-mail had been sent to the recipient informing them the book was waiting.  But after several days I saw no sign of the sale on my KDP Report.  This confused me and as the weeks progressed I still did not see the sale show up, even though when I had ‘gifted’ someone an e-book previously the sale showed up rather quickly.

Puzzled, I got into contact with Amazon and was informed that until the gift was claimed the sale was not done and would not show up in the report.  I am following up with Aurora Jean to have her get in contact with the recipient to check their e-mail, specifically their ‘Spam’ filter, so they can claim their prize.

But this experience was an eye-opener for me and based on the number of thanks and kudos I got from fellow authors about my article on gifting e-books, I felt it important to share this new piece of information here.  I recently ran a 50% off sale on all the e-books in my Para-Earth Series and did not see much sales happening at all.  Then I remembered, I had mentioned in my advertising the benefits of ‘scheduling’ when the books should arrive and will be waiting until Christmas and Hannukah to see if sales were actually much better than I’d thought.

So the lesson here is patience my friends.  I still highly recommend gifting e-books and that all writers should mention the scheduling feature of when the book is to arrive.  Just don’t be discouraged if sales don’t seem to be picking up right away.  They may be waiting in the wings to surprise you especially around this holiday season.

So until next time.  Take care, be safe as you shop, and keep writing.

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