Apple Enables iBookstore Gifting for the First Time

So let’s say that your mother just got a brand new iPad or iPhone for the holidays, and one of the things they’re most excited about is getting into the e-book game with the iBookstore. Gifting them a book from the iBookstore would be a great little starter present to get their library going – and now Apple is allowing you to do just that, right in time for Christmas. While users have long been able to gift music, movies, and television shows, up until now this feature has remained unavailable in the iBookstore.

The process is easy – just head over to the book’s iBookstore entry, and click the “Gift this Book” button to get started. From there you select your recipient using their email address, your name, and personalize the gift with a little message. To make holiday gifting easier, Apple also allows you to delay the sending of the gift until a designated date – say, December 25th, to make sure that your special gift gets sent at just the right time.

Amazon has allowed customers to gift Kindle books for quite some time now, so this is definitely a welcome addition to the iBookstore for any Apple Mac or iOS user looking to build their iBooks library. It should be noted, however, that iBook gifts are only allowed to be sent and received by customers in the same country – you won’t be able to send a gift to your friend overseas at the moment, unfortunately.