Now here’s an interesting new idea for giving ebooks as gifts. Starting July 15th, you’ll be able to walk into a Target retail store and pick up a Livrada ebook gift card.
What’s interesting about the Livrada gift cards is that they are replicas of the actual book covers. What’s more, it doesn’t matter what kind of ereader you have; the ebook gift cards allow you to choose where to download the ebook from.
This is certainly a different approach for giving ebooks. The other options usually involve just sending an email gift card to whomever you wish to give an ebook too. Livrada doesn’t like the impersonal manner of that. Plus you may not know what type of ereader a person has to send a proper gift card for that specific platform.
Livrada’s gift cards on the other hand are meant to focus on the ebook and not platform.
They are launching six New York Times best selling titles in all Target stores on July 15th. Titles include Fifty Shades of Grey, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, State of Wonder, Gone Girl, Charles Street, and Odd Thomas.
According to the Livrada website, at launch the gift cards will only work with Kindle and Nook devices. Seeing as how those two ebookstores are locked into their own DRM schemes, it leaves out a lot of other ereaders.
But Livrada’s goal is to expand to include all ebook reader brands. If they get on board with a company like Kobo, for instance, who just uses regular Adobe DRM, then these would be compatible with pretty much any ebook reader out there.
This is a cool new idea and it will be interesting to see how it works out.
Oh, DRM. I have been trying to find a program that strips the DRM code off of my ebooks for awhile now. I found a couple of YouTube tutorials and downloaded a program, both of which didn’t work. I am super glad that I invested most of my ebook money in Kobo books, which can be read “freely” on any ePub device.
Do you use Calibre? There are some handy DRM removal plugins but I haven’t tried them yet. I really should do a tutorial about it someday. Google Apprentice Alf and you’ll find what you seek.
@Nathan I do use Calibre (I was actually just reading your Calibre guides earlier this afternoon), but I was totally unaware of any de-DRM plugins. I have also not heard of Apprentice Alf. Thanks for the tips, as always.
How does Livrada plan to handle the situation where the person who receives the gift card already has the book or has read it already. Can you use the dollar value toward another title?
@Nathan – The Calibre plugins are incredible and work flawlessly. The process is very simple and it would be great of an ebook-reader.com tutorial. I am reading my Adobe ePub books on my Kindle as we speak. 😉
Good to know, Andrew. I’ll have to add it to my to-do list.
@Nathan- thank you for spreading the word about Livrada. We are really excited about our launch and appreciate your interest.
@Echorad – Great question! We are putting together a FAQ and this is one topic we will have there. Basically, when redeeming for Kindle, when you login to Amazon to download the ebook it will check if you already have that e-book title. If you do, Amazon inform you that you already have the book and let you exchange for credit to redeem for another book. It’s slightly different for Nook. It will always have a link below the button where you Accept the Gift asking if you want to exchange for Barnes & Noble credit.
Glad to see Livrada replied to my question. Amazon won’t know, however, if I have a physical copy of the ebook for which I just received a gift card if I or the person who gave it to me didn’t buy it at Amazon. So I hope there is always an option at all the ebook sites (including Amazon)for a specific Livrada ebook gift to be exchanged for credit. Thank you