Daily Archives: January 1, 2016

What’s Your Old Kindle Worth? (Updated)

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Kindle trade in

Amazon has a promotion going on encouraging you to trade in your old Kindle. It sounds pretty simple. You answer a few questions about your Kindle’s condition to get a trade in quote. Then, print the label and send it in. Amazon will verify the condition and apply a gift card to your account.  You also receive a $20 discount good towards the purchase of a new Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle Voyage or Kindle for Kids bundle.

You can trade in any of the following e-ink Kindles:

  • 1st Generation Kindle
  • Kindle 2nd Gen Free 3G
  • Kindle 2nd Gen U.S. Wireless
  • Kindle 5th Gen (black) Wi-Fi
  • Kindle 4th Gen (graphite) Wi-Fi
  • Kindle Touch Wi-Fi
  • Kindle Touch Wi-Fi + 3G
  • Kindle DX (white) 3G
  • Kindle DX (white) U.S. Wireless
  • Kindle DX (graphite) 3G
  • Kindle Keyboard (white) Wi-Fi + 3G
  • Kindle Keyboard (graphite) Wi-Fi
  • Kindle Keyboard (graphite) Wi-Fi + 3G
  • Kindle Paperwhite 6th Gen Wi-Fi
  • Kindle Paperwhite 6th Gen Wi-Fi + 3G
  • Kindle Paperwhite 5th Gen Wi-Fi
  • Kindle Paperwhite 5th Gen Wi-Fi + 3G

Have a broken one? No worries. Even non-working Kindles are eligible for trade-in.

There are limitations, terms and conditions to the offer which expires on March 31, 2015*. You can find out more info here.

I have several working 1st generation Kindles I need to decide what to do with. This might be worth checking into as an option, although the last time I checked the trade in values, they weren’t offering a lot. I think it would be a no-brainer for a non-working device or one whose battery doesn’t hold a charge anymore. It is a great incentive to recycle or upgrade a device.

Are you interested in trading in your old Kindle towards a new one?

*Updated to add that I think this may be a misprint as the promotion just appeared, but I am  checking with Amazon to verify.

*Update 2: I spoke to Kindle customer service and they assured me that this offer is indeed still valid. The CS rep I spoke to also thought that this was a typo (it is the first day of 2016) and that would be she would be initiating a support request for someone to check the web page copy. 

*Update 3: The first date was a typo. This offer ends on March 31, 2016.

Happy Public Domain Day 2016

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pdd2016January 1st is the day that works with expiring copyrights would enter the public domain. In the United states, the number of works entering the public domain is zero. Because of extensions in US Copyright law, no works will enter the public domain here until 2019. 😦

Every year, the Duke University Center for the Study of the Public Domain website writes about the works that would have entered the public domain under the old copyright laws.  This year, works from the year 1959 would have entered the public domain: Films like North by Northwest by Hitchcock, Books like Goldfinger by Ian Fleming, music like Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, early episodes TV series like Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone or Rawhide, classic science fiction like Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and Walter Miller’s exquisite Canticle for Leibowitz.

For me personally, Miller’s Canticle for Leibowitz is a particular travesty because it is not yet available as an ebook, although you can get it in paper (from a publisher I’ve never heard of) or in audio. I suspect the book is an absolute rights nightmare. If you read the Wikipedia entry on the novel, it says that it was originally published as magazine articles, then as a hardcover, and has been published in both paper and hardcover over 40 times since then. The original book publisher itself has changed hands several times.  Even the NPR radio play version has been been removed from the Internet Archive due to rights issues.

Sigh.

Anyway, as you ponder the fact that the Kindle version of Starship Troopers that’s selling for $9.99 could actually be free in some alternate universe with different copyright laws, check out Duke’s article on the work that would have entered the public domain this year. There’s a special section for pre-1976 copyrights whose copyrights would have expired. The article addresses the orphan works issues as well.