Book Review Club discussion

Hi,

I see in the review pools that many people offer their books as a "Kindle gift". I know what that is, but I have a technical question about it. Can someone please help me out?

I live in the EU, and we have a VAT of 27% on digital books. (Ouch.) So basically, any book that would normally cost $2.99, costs me $3.80.

What happens if I get a book as a gift?

1, Does the author have to pay $3.80 for the $2.99 book because of my location?

2, Or does the author only pay $2.99, and since the book costs me $3.80, I have to pay the additional $0.81?

3, Or will it only cost a total of $2.99, which -- since it's a gift -- is already paid for?

On the other side: what happens if I want to give my $2.99 book as a gift to someone in the US? It costs me $3.80, but the recipient would only have to pay $2.99 for it. WIll it cost me $3.80 (based on my location), or $2.99 (based on the recipient's location)?

So many of you offer your books as a gift, you probably already have experiences with reviewers in the EU.

Thanks,

Attila

Hi Attila,

When you gift a copy of a book, the gifter pays the bill and it's sent through email. Not sure if your EU Overlords monitor such traffic, so I'm uncertain about the VAT (ouch! is right). I'm inclined to believe that you would pay the VAT on your end regardless because it's simply a tax collected at time of purchase.

Someone please correct me, but I believe that you cannot actually give free copies of your book away from Amazon unless the book is enrolled in KDP Select and it's during a promotional period (selected by you). However, every time you gift a book to someone your sales rank increases.

I also believe if you list your book on Smashwords that you can create a free coupon and sent it to people.

Sacha

Sacha wrote: "Not sure if your EU Overlords monitor such traffic, so I'm uncertain about the VAT (ouch! is right)..."

Amazon knows my location, so it automatically adds the VAT.

I just received a book as a gift, and did NOT have to pay the extra VAT this way.

When I want to buy it for anyone, even as a gift, it adds the VAT.

So it seems VAT is calculated based on the location of the person who pays for the book, not the person who receives it.

Good to know.

Next question about Kindle gifts... :)

I just posted my review on Amazon for the book I received as a gift, and it does not show as a verified purchase.

I thought one of the reasons people gifted books was to have the reviews read "verified purchase".

Is this how it's supposed to work? :-o

Attila, you are correct. I've done the same thing. If you buy it as a gift, it will not show as a verified purchase.

So the only benefit of gifting someone a book is to boost the sales rank? (In this review group context.)

I think it still shows as a review, just not a verified purchase. I think you can create a promotion with a free book that you provide as a link and send the link only to those who you wish to. They essentially buy it for free but since it's a purchase it should show up as a verified purchase. That's a theory I have but haven't tried.

The review shows up, sure, but it looks the same as if I had sent them a review copy, without spending money on it.

Boosting the sales rank this way could be worth it, basically you spend 30% of the book's price on the gift, and that's it. (Doesn't work for me, but it should work for most of you.)

Books bought during the free promo show up as verified purchases, that's correct. But you only have 5 free days every 90 days, so that needs to be planned carefully.

Thank you for the questions because I was wondering all this myself. Is there a way to send a coupon or gift card to someone to purchase the book so it can be reviewed as a verified purchase? Has anyone done this?

Susan wrote: "Thank you for the questions because I was wondering all this myself. Is there a way to send a coupon or gift card to someone to purchase the book so it can be reviewed as a verified purchase? Has a..."

I don't think gifting ever shows as a verified purchase - but I know that freebies do. If you are with KDP Select, then you are allowed to give your book away for $0 on five days out of every 90 days of your Select contract. And every one of those free downloads does show up as a Verified Purchase when those customers put up a review. So in some ways this works better than gifting, because at least it isn't costing you anything to buy your own book - and you will see Verified Purchase on those customers' reviews.

Thank you Ann. That's something to consider then.

Susan wrote: "Thank you Ann. That's something to consider then."

Yes, but the downside is that people (myself include - having only recently read two books that I had downloaded as freebies back in 2014!) tend to download free books and often never get around to reading them, so if you wanted to use it as a way to get verified purchase reviews, you might want to consider doing something like saving up some reviews in the swap review group, so that you can have a condensed download and review time, if that makes sense ... otherwise it is easy to see 100-200 people download your book, but that doesn't mean that any of them ever get around to reading it (let alone reviewing it) ... freebies work well in getting the books out there, and it does make your rankings go crazy for those few days (get to feel really important if you watch your rankings over five solid days of $0 on a book!), but no guarantees of the reviews unfortunately. I guess the trick is to coordinate a lot of things in one go - getting as many people to download a book as possible, but somehow making sure that people are going to actually read and review quickly too ...

It's all just one long experiment, I am finding, but I think if someone is gifted a book, they would be more likely to get on and read it immediately, which is a good thing...
:)

I truly appreciate your experience Ann. Thank you!

Susan wrote: "Thank you for the questions because I was wondering all this myself. Is there a way to send a coupon or gift card to someone to purchase the book so it can be reviewed as a verified purchase? Has a..."

This works!

I received a giftcard for the exact amount of the book, I bought the book with that money, reviewed it, and the review showed up as a verified purchase.

One thing that was confusing to me was that I had no way to tell Amazon how to pay for the book. I redeemed the giftcard, had the money in my account, but when I clicked on buying the book, it just ... did... :) It didn't tell me if it was using my account credit, or my credit card, or what's going on. Luckily, it was using the account credits, so all worked fine. :)

Thank you Attila. That's the way I'm thinking of doing it. I actually put the Kindle price of the first book down to .99 cents while running a goodreads giveaway, but I think I'll keep the price down for a little while longer to do the gift this way. It makes sense. :)