As some sort of promotion, Amazon is offering me $30 to trade in my old Kindle. I will pass. My Kindle works just fine for the little use I have for it.
What would Amazon do with several hundred old $30 Kindles?
They’ll most likely scrap them. The idea of these types of trade-in programs is to keep the old product from being passed down to a potential new Kindle buyer.
That is awful.
Might they resell them in developing countries?
Highly unlikely. They really don’t want these in use anywhere they could possibly sell new ones. The best possible outcome for them is they’re sold off as scrap for precious metal recovery, but the key word is scrap. They’ll be destroyed before being shipped off.
Even sadder is when stores have to literally take a sledge hammer to printers and other display electronics (that aren’t sold) that have a newer model replacing them. I used to work at OfficeMax (and this is standard practice) and the guys would have a field day destroying printers with a sledge hammer before tossing them into the dumpster. I’m not sure if this was corporate policy or just to prevent people from digging in the dumpster and getting hurt
I’m not entirely convinced of this. The economics behind a Kindle are different since the drive consumption fo another Amazon product, ebooks. I don’t expect Amazon really makes money off Kindle devices themselves, it really a razor handle/blade model of selling.
A job I had as a truck-driver back in the 60s was with a major TV rental company. (back then TVs were so expensive and unreliable that most people rented).
I was based in London, and one day I was sent to a town in the North with a full load of old TVs that had been swapped out at the end of their contracts. These early sets often came in wooden cabinets and the users generally looked after them, so while the works were pretty useless, the cabinets were still pretty nice as pieces of furniture.
At the depot, when I unloaded, I asked what they did with them. The answer was that they were all burned in a big bonfire - this was to prevent “unscrupulous” people from putting new works inside and selling them. Security was tight.
I think it’s different than the razor/blade example. Now, I am not going to say I am the normal Kindle user , but I also am not the only one of my type. In all the years I’ve owned a Kindle, I’ve spent maybe $200 on books. I’ve bought a couple of full-priced books and some free or $1.99 deals - but most of the books have been borrowed from the library and they aren’t all Kindle format.(which means Amazon made nothing off them even when the library bought them) You couldn’t have the razor/blade if the blades could easily be obtained for free.
The Kindle differs from the “Give away the razor and sell the blades” marketing in that it’s an electronic device that must be inspected/refurbished before being passed along. The potential good will and money they would make from the sale of ebooks would be negated if a non-inspected/refurbished Kindle were to burst into flames because of a bad battery.
Also as Dorren stated, there’s a lot of free ebook content (e.g. Project Gutenberg) that can be loaded on a Kindle. The razor/blades tactic doesn’t work when the users can’t afford the blades.
Edit: Amazon does sell refurbed Kindles, but these are mostly returns/exchanges, not trade-ins.
If Android tablets can be sold for $50 without any “blades” to sell, Amazon is making money on Kindle/Kindle Fire hardware.
Singer busted up the old sewing machines that came back into their possession through trade-in deals, to prevent them from getting on the second hand market. This was back in the 1800s.
I agree - I’ve had a Kindle for almost 7 years and I haven’t spent much on books. Rarely have I bought a full-price book - maybe once or twice and only because it was a new book from a favorite author that I couldn’t wait to read. I’ve had pretty good good luck with the free and $1.99 books.
Sure you can, as long as enough people will pay for the blades. In this case it largely works because books aren’t interchangeable commodities.
Project Gutenberg copies of Treasure Island and Little Women make it harder to sell copies of those specific books, but I bet they don’t materially impact the book market as a whole. Most people want to read new stuff, not old classics.
I’d be somewhat surprised if Amazon destroys all the returned Kindles. Amazon benefits in a lot of ways from having more Kindles out there. Platform dominance is huge for them, and scrapping useful ebook readers that they could sell cheap in poor countries is pretty wasteful for such an efficient low-margin company.
Apple has a similar sort of return program for old iPhones, and they face the same sorts of economic pressures (they’d rather sell you a new one at full price than a used one for cheaper), but they don’t scrap them: they sell them on to resellers in poorer countries.
I, on the other hand, have spent thousands of dollars on Kindle books. Remember those class action lawsuits against publishers for price fixing/ overcharging for Kindle e-books? I got some serious money in those settlements, over $500. Of course, it was paid out in Amazon credits and I bought more e-books.
Funny story, when I first got my Kindle the first thing I did was load it up. I bought a lot of books and I purchased them so fast my credit card provider locked my account. Because each book comes in as a separate cc charge. What they saw was over a dozen charges to my card within a 5 minute window.
I have never downloaded a book from anywhere other than Amazon, although I have downloaded free books from them. They don’t advertise it, but if you search for free books (free mystery, free thriller) you will get a wide selection. But I don’t download a lot of free book or Kindle Unlimited books. They are usually mediocre and life’s too short. I do check the daily deals and Ive found some good books there. Not the Kindle Unlimited ones, though. And yes, I buy lots of bestsellers.
And I’m willing to bet that most Kindle users don’t download from sources other than Amazon, either they aren’t tech savvy enough or can’t be bothered.
I have found a strong “you get what you pay for” dynamic with books.
I think Amazon does pretty well on selling content.
I didn’t mention Project Gutenberg - but the hundreds of new ebooks I’ve borrowed from libraries cost me nothing - and the library didn’t pay Amazon for the ones that weren’t in Kindle format.
Like I said, I know not everyone is like me - but I spent a lot more on books with Amazon pre-Kindle.
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In some cases, they may repair/refurbish them and resell them; Amazon does sell “Certified Refurbished” devices.
If the device as such isn’t salvageable, it may have usable parts or materials? Or maybe Amazon thinks there are enough people who would be willing to buy a new Kindle if they could just get something for their old one.
Anyway, here’s their page about their “trade in your old Kindle” offer.
I get a lot of “essentially free” books for my Kindle from Amazon because they’re paid for by my gift card balance. Since I get the gift cards by cashing in the cashback bonus on one of my credit cards, which is found money. 
Ah, someone else must have mentioned it.
I also use my Kindle mostly with free library books. But I know I’m not the average user.
The average (as in modal) user receives a Kindle as a gift and doesn’t buy more than one or two books.* Amazon makes money selling Kindles. Amazon also makes money selling books. Used Kindles may cut into Amazon’s new Kindle sales, but they cut into sales of other e-readers just as much.
I expect that what Amazon does with traded-in Kindles depends on the Kindle that is traded-in. My 8-year-old Kindle Paperwhite 1.0 probably doesn’t go back on the market. A two-year-old Kindle Fire likely does as a refurb.
Refurbished Kindles are also sold through woot.com, a “deal of the day” site owned by Amazon. The third-generation Kindle Keyboard is occasionally offered there and always sells out very quickly. A lot of people still want a physical keyboard!