Okay, so I recently won an Amazon gift card from an author I follow on facebook (yay me! lol) and I want to use it to buy ebooks. When I got the email I went ahead and added it to my amazon account, but now I am unsure how it works.  Usually when I buy a book from Amazon the minute I click buy, it is an automatic purchase and they charge my debit card.  I see no way to select the gift card.

 So I guess my question is I click buy on a book, will it default to my debit card or will it access the gift card first? 

it'll use the gift card first, and if you go over that amount it'll go to the payment method you have set up (your debit card).

i do this frequently to buy Kindle books, so there aren't a bunch of small charges on my credit card.  :)

Thanks Ellen!

I know of some parents who use gift cards to budget the kid's Amazon accounts.  Plus those tiny purchases can trigger fraud holds.

Just be careful because you have a gift card amount stored now. With Amazon's One-Click system, which I think accounts are automatically defaulted to, if you accidentally click to buy something, it will automatically take the money right out of your gift card without a secondary window to verify your purchase, since there is money in your account from the gift card. That's the downside of Amazon's One-Click system.