6 ms·

Unless I'm totally mis-understanding their data gathering, this post seems completely wrongheaded (or at the least, willfully ignorant and self-serving.) They'

Unless I'm totally mis-understanding their data gathering, this post seems completely wrongheaded (or at the least, willfully ignorant and self-serving.) They're indexing the popularity of e-readers in different MSAs by looking at how many are for sale on secondary markets, as a % of what's for sale on the secondary markets in that city. This seems like a really poor proxy for how popular e-readers are in those locations. There are several things they're not correcting for: * The more someone uses their e-reader, the less likely it is to end up on a secondary market - either because you're using it, or you still intend to use it, or you broke it. (This is what happened to my last Kindle - I used it heavily, but eventually something in my bag rammed into the screen and broke it to a point it was unsaleable.) * Some cities may have a larger volume of items per-capita on a secondary market because people have more to sell. E.g. if you have a larger house with a garage, you probably have more items to potentially resell than someone with a tiny apartment. * Cities with a lower proportion of smartphone / tablet users might buy more kindles. That doesn't mean they're consuming fewer ebooks.

andrewpi 15y ago
I agree with you. In addition, compared to the price of living in a city like New York or LA, a Kindle is quite cheap and almost disposable. It makes sense to me that less New Yorkers would be trying to sell their old Kindles.
- tomkarlo 15y ago
  I didn't think about this before but yeah, with the price of a _new_ Kindle at about $80, a used, unwarrantied one from the prior generation must run as low as $30-40. At that level you're starting to get too low for most people to bother selling it on CL.
binarysolo 15y ago
Agreed -- correlating the amount of Kindles resold on Craigslist to a population's "e-literacy" seems tenuous at best. There's a buncha variables in play when you're considering the types of people who 1) are on the Internet, 2) are using Craigslist to resell, and 3) have Kindles to resell. If anything, I'd observe from the data that college towns resell their Kindles a lot more because the students are receptive to new/hip tech, collect their data point, and plenty of them move on by reselling via Craigslist, which extracts more value over eBay/Amazon, with some opportunity cost of time (to fulfill the order by meeting in person and what not).
bambax 15y ago
Absolutely! The Kindle is a wonderful device that is already very good and doesn't improve enough to justify upgrading all the time like Apple devices. And it's very cheap, which makes selling old ones not very appealing. I own a Kindle 3 (with a keyboard) and couldn't live without it. Even if I eventually buy a newer one I will keep that one to leave at home for example, or give to my kids. But sell it? Never. This post is quite disappointing, as are most from Priceonomics. They are apparently trying to mimic the blogging strategy of OKCupid, but they're doing it very poorly.
- why-el 15y ago
  Off topic question, but you seem like a long time Kindle user, did you ever have screen problems with it? Mine is just two months old, and its screen half-froze and I can only read half of the documents. I googled this around and it looks like its a frequent hardware problem people face.
  - thmcmahon 15y ago
    Just call Amazon - I broke mine by dropping it (completely my fault) and they replaced it within a week.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - why-el 15y ago
      Will do. Though I have two issues. One is that I bought it from Staples, not Amazon, and I am not sure what they would do in this case. Second, though I bought it in the US, I am currently in Sao Paulo. I hope they can send it overseas.
  - bambax 15y ago
    Never had a problem with mine, and I don't treat it with special care. YMMV, I guess... ;-)
- gbog 15y ago
achompas 15y ago
While working as a former economic researcher, my then-boss had a litmus test for analyzing studies: he would always try to identify an alternative explanation for any qualitative assertions made by the study. See midas's comment below for a great example of this. [0] In economics -- hell, in any empirical field -- it's absurdly hard to draw qualitative conclusions. If you see these often, like in Priceonomics's blog posts, then you should have doubts. I get Priceonomics is a YC company so we should cheer for them or something, but they're quickly picking up a reputation for making qualitative jumps using elementary work. You don't want to be in that position when you're in the business of analyzing data. [0] http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3859136 http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3859136
grandalf 15y ago
This is the first of their posts that seems like BS intended to go viral. Previous ones have been fairly interesting even if a few basic economic principles have been willfully avoided to make them more juicy.
alexharrower 15y ago
You must live in fresno :(
AJ007 15y ago
My understanding was that Amazon kept their Kindle sales closely guarded. The type of person that purchases a Kindle off of craigslist must be completely different than one that buys it off Amazon. I might be wrong, but Amazon already sells cheaper refurbished Kindles where as Apple does not do the same for iPads.
- achompas 15y ago
  where as Apple does not do the same for iPads. They do: http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/ipad http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/ipad
smackfu 15y ago
Not to mention that the big price drops for e-readers were just this Christmas season. I personally bought two $89 Kindles as gifts for relatives, and I'm sure tons of others were sold at that price, and they wouldn't be reflected in these stats at all.

andrewpi 15y ago

I agree with you. In addition, compared to the price of living in a city like New York or LA, a Kindle is quite cheap and almost disposable. It makes sense to me that less New Yorkers would be trying to sell their old Kindles.

tomkarlo 15y ago
I didn't think about this before but yeah, with the price of a _new_ Kindle at about $80, a used, unwarrantied one from the prior generation must run as low as $30-40. At that level you're starting to get too low for most people to bother selling it on CL.

binarysolo 15y ago

Agreed -- correlating the amount of Kindles resold on Craigslist to a population's "e-literacy" seems tenuous at best. There's a buncha variables in play when you're considering the types of people who 1) are on the Internet, 2) are using Craigslist to resell, and 3) have Kindles to resell. If anything, I'd observe from the data that college towns resell their Kindles a lot more because the students are receptive to new/hip tech, collect their data point, and plenty of them move on by reselling via Craigslist, which extracts more value over eBay/Amazon, with some opportunity cost of time (to fulfill the order by meeting in person and what not).

bambax 15y ago

Absolutely! The Kindle is a wonderful device that is already very good and doesn't improve enough to justify upgrading all the time like Apple devices. And it's very cheap, which makes selling old ones not very appealing. I own a Kindle 3 (with a keyboard) and couldn't live without it. Even if I eventually buy a newer one I will keep that one to leave at home for example, or give to my kids. But sell it? Never. This post is quite disappointing, as are most from Priceonomics. They are apparently trying to mimic the blogging strategy of OKCupid, but they're doing it very poorly.

why-el 15y ago
Off topic question, but you seem like a long time Kindle user, did you ever have screen problems with it? Mine is just two months old, and its screen half-froze and I can only read half of the documents. I googled this around and it looks like its a frequent hardware problem people face.
- thmcmahon 15y ago
  Just call Amazon - I broke mine by dropping it (completely my fault) and they replaced it within a week.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - why-el 15y ago
    Will do. Though I have two issues. One is that I bought it from Staples, not Amazon, and I am not sure what they would do in this case. Second, though I bought it in the US, I am currently in Sao Paulo. I hope they can send it overseas.
- bambax 15y ago
  Never had a problem with mine, and I don't treat it with special care. YMMV, I guess... ;-)
gbog 15y ago

achompas 15y ago

While working as a former economic researcher, my then-boss had a litmus test for analyzing studies: he would always try to identify an alternative explanation for any qualitative assertions made by the study. See midas's comment below for a great example of this. [0] In economics -- hell, in any empirical field -- it's absurdly hard to draw qualitative conclusions. If you see these often, like in Priceonomics's blog posts, then you should have doubts. I get Priceonomics is a YC company so we should cheer for them or something, but they're quickly picking up a reputation for making qualitative jumps using elementary work. You don't want to be in that position when you're in the business of analyzing data. [0] http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3859136 http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3859136

grandalf 15y ago

This is the first of their posts that seems like BS intended to go viral. Previous ones have been fairly interesting even if a few basic economic principles have been willfully avoided to make them more juicy.

alexharrower 15y ago

You must live in fresno :(

AJ007 15y ago

My understanding was that Amazon kept their Kindle sales closely guarded. The type of person that purchases a Kindle off of craigslist must be completely different than one that buys it off Amazon. I might be wrong, but Amazon already sells cheaper refurbished Kindles where as Apple does not do the same for iPads.

achompas 15y ago
where as Apple does not do the same for iPads. They do: http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/ipad http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/ipad

smackfu 15y ago

Not to mention that the big price drops for e-readers were just this Christmas season. I personally bought two $89 Kindles as gifts for relatives, and I'm sure tons of others were sold at that price, and they wouldn't be reflected in these stats at all.