Best Digital Gifts Other Than Gift Cards
If you’re looking for a last-minute gift that doesn’t require shipping or handling, don’t feel like you have to send a boring old gift card. Here’s Lifehacker’s guide to gifting ebooks, audiobooks, digital games, and more.
Books
I love e-books – they don’t take up space, I can read them almost anywhere, and when I’m done, they disappear wherever e-books go when you’re not reading them. (Cloud, I guess.)
Here’s how to buy an Amazon Kindle book as a gift. All you need is the recipient’s email address. Your gift recipient doesn’t even need a Kindle to read Kindle eBooks, as they can download the Kindle app to a variety of devices.
Here’s how to gift someone a Barnes and Noble Nook book if you don’t want to do Amazon stuff – and yes, there is a Nook app for people who don’t have Nook eBooks.
Here’s how to give someone an Apple iBook. (They’ll need an Apple device to read this, so make sure they’re not PC users.)
If you’re on a very tight budget, you can always send someone a Project Gutenberg public domain eBook. It will cost you nothing but your time and there are plenty to choose from.
Audiobooks
Ever since I read the Literary Hub article on the best audiobooks to give away this holiday season , I’ve secretly longed for an audiovisual edition of Anne Patchett ‘s Dutch House with a story by Tom Hanks.
If you’d like to buy it for me (or anyone else), here’s how to donate an audiobook to Apple and how to donate an audiobook . Unfortunately, Barnes and Noble does not allow you to gift Nook audiobooks – although I think you could buy someone a Barnes and Noble gift card and invite them to use it in an audiobook.
If you’d like to send someone a free audiobook, visit LibriVox . These publicly available audiobooks are read by volunteers, and I spent one summer listening to most of the Green Gables series of articles on a part-time job that required a lot of padding. Consider LibriVox highly recommended.
Games
Here’s how to gift someone a Steam game . (I loved every minute of Baba Is You’s puzzle if you’re looking for inspiration.)
Here’s how to gift someone an Xbox game.
If you want to gift someone a Nintendo Switch game, you need to send them a download code .
If you want to gift someone a PlayStation game, you will need to buy a gift card and hope the recipient uses it in the game you wanted them to receive.
Subscriptions
I was going to write a guide to gifting digital movies, shows and albums, but it looks like you can’t do that anymore (RIP, iTunes).
So … let’s get straight to the subscriptions.
Amazon Prime offers an easy donation process , and your recipient will be able to take advantage of not only Prime Delivery, but all Prime streaming media that come with a membership, including music, e-books, movies, and the original Amazon Prime series like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (only that the third season was released).
Disney Plus also has a gift subscription option, and I’m sure a lot of families will get Disney Plus this year.
If you want to gift someone Apple Music, Netflix, or Hulu, you will have to hand over a gift card that covers the cost of the annual subscription. Other than that, well … I know there are a billion other media services out there, but I’m not going to look at each one separately. (If you are very interested in gifting someone a Sling TV, you can figure it out for yourself.)
Finally, remember that you can also gift people digital New York Times subscriptions, Washington Post subscriptions , NYC subscriptions, and other online magazine and news subscriptions . This is the gift that will be given every day of the year.