With Christmas coming up, if you’re thinking about gift ideas, books make wonderful gifts that give hours of enjoyment. With traditional books you can write an inscription inside it, wrap it, and put under the tree.

 But if the intended receiver does not live nearby, then you have to deal with mailing. If have a large number of books to give, traditional books can run up your credit card bill quickly. E-books, though, are often less expensive than the traditional books.

Some may think you can’t give an escape-from-reality-gift if it is only available as an e-book, or you want to be frugal and give the less expensive version of a beloved treasure. But you can.

Below are the steps to give a book purchased from Amazon to someone with a Kindle or a Kindle reading app.

1. Make sure you have the email address of the person you want to give the book to. The recipient’s Kindle or reading app will have to be registered to that email address.
2.  Find the book in the Kindle store that you want to gift. Free books, books on pre-order, and subscriptions cannot be gifted.
3. On the product detail page, click the Give as a Gift button.
4. Enter the email address of your gift recipient.
5. Enter the delivery date and an option gift message.
6. Click Place your order to finish your gift purchase using your Amazon 1-Click payment method.

These instructions, as well as how your beneficiary can redeem their gift, can be found on here Amazon’s website.

I can think of three books that would make the airline thriller readers on your gift list happy. Wink. Wink.

Look for my fourth novel in the spring of 2016.