Amazon was slowing bringing out gifting of Kindle books, but they definitely made the process easy when they finally got it working. There was just one little problem - you had to stay up until after midnight to send the book, if you wanted it to arrive on a specific date (and hope the recipient had already gone to bed, so it was a morning surprise). What every asked for last year was the ability to specify the actual delivery date for the gift. Today, Amazon announced just that feature! You can still send a book immediately - the email here arrived within a minute - but the main addition is that you can pick a date for delivery. I'm including a picture below to show you the screen you now get to fill out. Once you send the gift, you can use the order summary to check the status and even re-send the email to notify the recipient, up until the gift is actually accepted (nice in case the email was lost in a flooded email inbox). As you can see, you can either have Amazon deliver it when you specify, or get the email sent to yourself and then forward to email yourself later on.
The only question I have: What happens if a book is removed from the Kindle store after you send it as a gift, but before the recipient accepts it (or during the time that Amazon is waiting to send the email? Once accepted, it isn't an issue, of course, but during the limbo period between when the sale occurs (you send the gift) and when it is safely tucked away into the recipient's library, it seems that there could be an opportunity for an issue. Also, what if the price goes down during that period (I would not think going up would be an issue - this is essentially a "pre-order", just of an existing product and Amazon never charges more than the original sale price for these). True, if you give a copy of Steve Jobs' Biography, you though it was worth the money when you set up the order; but, if it goes down $5 between now and Christmas Day, you might want a credit for that difference.
