It seems unfair to me that they charge $2 a download in any case, so yeah. I had no idea.

With the low cost of bandwidth now, I thought it was unfair that they charge US authors about a dime a download on top of their commission anyway.

No matter what happens to us, it appears Amazon wins.

 

This is why I buy my ebooks at Kobo and Smashwords, and when I gift a book I use Smashwords to do so. It costs me nothing to gift my own book and nothing extra to gift that of another author. The artificial border Amazon sets on their products is what causes them to be less popular outside the USA compared to those stores that don't do this.

 

Mostly, I'm surprised you were allowed to make a gift of an e-book to someone outside your country!

 

Mostly, I'm surprised you were allowed to make a gift of an e-book to someone outside your country!

I can only sell on Amazon.com, so that is the only place that I can gift a book.

 

You can always just send an ebook direct to someone instead of 'gifting' it through a retailer.

 

The thing is, I have fully formatted epubs and mobi files with embedded covers on my hard drive, so if anyone wants one of my books, I'll just send them an email with the file attached. Sure, it doesn't count in the sales figures on the various website, but I'd rather have that than pay 2.99 to gift someone a 99c book.

 

You can always just send an ebook direct to someone instead of 'gifting' it through a retailer.

I only have it as a Word file, so how do you go about gifting it so that it can be read on a Kindle?

 

I only have it as a Word file, so how do you go about gifting it so that it can be read on a Kindle?

There are free sites/programs that you can use to convert Word files to ebook formats (though I've only used one and it put 'created in this program' text on the file for the free version).

 

I only have it as a Word file, so how do you go about gifting it so that it can be read on a Kindle?

Shortcut would be to buy one copy of your own book (if it does not have DRM) and keep that handy to e-mail when needed?

 

I mean, that only makes sense if you email more than once, otherwise you might as well gift

 

Shortcut would be to buy one copy of your own book (if it does not have DRM) and keep that handy to e-mail when needed?

I haven't got an e-reader Father Christmas obviously didn't get my letter

 

I haven't got an e-reader Father Christmas obviously didn't get my letter

You don't need an e-reader, at least not for Kindle formatted books. You can read a Kindle book on your PC either with Kindle for PC or with the Kindle Cloud reader. Kindle for PC would be the way to go as you would download the file to your computer.

Betsy

 

With the low cost of bandwidth now, I thought it was unfair that they charge US authors about a dime a download on top of their commission anyway.

The marginal cost of bandwidth measured as $/byte may be low compared to the past. However, the cost of building, maintaining, and managing the infrastructure to utilize that bandwidth is very expensive.

 

You don't need an e-reader, at least not for Kindle formatted books. You can read a Kindle book on your PC either with Kindle for PC or with the Kindle Cloud reader. Kindle for PC would be the way to go as you would download the file to your computer.

Betsy

I used to have Kindle for PC, but the technician kindly did a cleanup of my computer and it must have got swept up with the rubbish. I'll have to download it again (if I can)

 

The thing is, I have fully formatted epubs and mobi files with embedded covers on my hard drive, so if anyone wants one of my books, I'll just send them an email with the file attached. Sure, it doesn't count in the sales figures on the various website, but I'd rather have that than pay 2.99 to gift someone a 99c book.

Gifted books don't count as sales anyway.

 

The bandwidth charges are exorbitantly high not just for gifting, but even for sales--and Amazon hasn't once reduced them since they started.

With the HD eReaders, it's really becoming an issue for comics and kidlit authors (becuse you need larger pictures to fill these HD screens). I have one book, that I get charged 47 cents for each sale!

Most new kindles don't come with free whispernet any longer and the 3G one's now make the customer pay for their bandwidth, so why are we still paying this fee!

 

There are free sites/programs that you can use to convert Word files to ebook formats (though I've only used one and it put 'created in this program' text on the file for the free version).

Before I used Scrivener, I used jEdit to convert Word to HTML, and Calibre to make epub and mobi files. If anyone needs it, I have a procedure in Word/PDF that explains step by step how to convert a Word document into an e-book.

 

Word-->Word Web Page Filtered file--> Mobi--> prc file--> USB copy to Kindle--> Amazon

The prc file can be emailed . The recipient does a USB copy to his personal Kindle unit.

It also let's you see what the book looks like before doing the Amazon upload.

 

I only have it as a Word file, so how do you go about gifting it so that it can be read on a Kindle?

You can download a copy of your book through the KDP dashboard - just click into your title and grab the file linked next to "downloadable previewer", that'll give you a mobi copy of the book.

 

You can download a copy of your book through the KDP dashboard - just click into your title and grab the file linked next to "downloadable previewer", that'll give you a mobi copy of the book.

Thanks. Will give it a try when I'm feeling strong enough to deal with possible problems (like messing up the whole thing )