How I Make Use of Kindle Notes

First, a Warning/Clarification

Before I get started, let me preface this with something that hopefully doesn’t need to be said, but…just in case, and so that I am not misunderstood, either: When taking notes or copying brief passages (or recipes) from a book — whether electronically or the old-fashioned way with pen & ink — be conscious of your ethics. Authors and their support teams work hard to put their books out and the worker is worthy of his wages! Most books are not meant to be copied and distributed by readers. However, if I already own a book, I don’t find anything questionable about moving that information around to someplace it’s easier for me to find when I want to reference it again.

Nor do I have an issue with copying a recipe or two for personal use from a cookbook checked out from the library or borrowed from a friend. (Please don’t publish someone else’s recipe, though, even on the internet and even if you own the book.) If you find yourself wanting to copy a lot of recipes from a cookbook you don’t own, you probably ought to just buy the cookbook!

And On to the “Meat” of the Post

With all that said, I’m going to walk you through exactly how I go about taking notes & highlights from my Kindle books and moving them to where I can easily find them again. Kindle Notes & Highlights are pretty new to most people, so I thought some of you might like an “in the trenches” look at how they can be useful.

First Step: Take Notes!

Of course the first requirement is that you have to actually have Kindle notes! You don’t have to have a Kindle device to read Kindle books. (Shhh…don’t tell anyone, but…I don’t. Even though, as a Kindle author/publisher, I really should.) You can read a Kindle book on practically any modern device with one of the free Kindle reading apps.

I have the reading apps installed on my PC and on our Android tablet. The PC isn’t really great for reading, generally, but is useful for a handful of books that are exceptionally resource-heavy (like some textbooks). For general purposes, the tablet works great. It’s easy to carry around, hold with one hand (so you can read and hold a baby!), etc. In my opinion, the apps are worth having even if just for reading free-for-download books.

Once you’re reading, tap-and-drag (or click-and-drag, on a non-mobile device) to highlight the section you want. When you release, you should get a little pop-up with a few options. Just tap (or click) on “highlight,” and you’re good to go. If you’d rather make a note, you can do the same thing: tap-and-drag, or, if you don’t need anything highlighted to go with the note, just tap and hold for a moment before releasing. You’ll get the same little popup. This time select “note,” then enter and save your note.

Unfortunately, at least in the version I’m using, you can’t make a note completely freestanding. So if you just do the tap-and-hold thing, you’ll still have one word highlighted, closest to where you tapped. As far as I know, there’s no way to get around that.

Once you’ve finished reading your book(s), you’re ready to interact with your notes.

Working With Kindle Notes Online — Getting Started

I use my notes in a few primary ways:

just plain old “book notes”
recipes I want to save & reference again
links I want to follow
writing reviews

For the most part, though, I “process” them all at once. You’ll find your Kindle Notes & Highlights here: https://kindle.amazon.com/your_highlights. Of course you’ll need to be logged in but, assuming you are, that will resolve to your own Kindle notes. (All notes and highlights are private by default, so no one else will see them unless you consciously set them to public.) When you log in, your page will look something like this — although obviously the details of which books and what notes will be different! I’ve made a few random notes and highlights on one of my books (that I wrote) so as to be extra-cautious of copyright, even though we’re looking at little enough here that it’s not likely to be an issue.

(This continues down the page, first with another note or two on this book, and then with other recent books, in this same format.)

One of the first things you might notice is this information:

Those numbers are for that book. So I have 7 highlighted passages and 2 notes in Essentials of Essential Oils. (I have a lot more than that when you take all my books as a whole!)

And with each highlight, there are three links/bits of information: there’s a link to the spot in the book the highlight is from, there’s an option to delete the highlight, and there’s an option to either add or edit a note, depending on whether there already is a note. See, these have notes already, so there’s an option to edit them.