by C.K. MacLeod
Many beta readers and editors like to proofread on a Kindle or in a Kindle app. This process involves highlighting passages and taking notes on your Kindle. When you’ve finished your proofread, you’ll need a way to get those notes to the author. But how?
Below are three options for retrieving your notes and highlights so you can share them with the author.
An Important Distinction
Amazon handles notes and highlights for purchased books differently than those for unpublished books, or personal documents. Notes and highlights for purchased books are stored in your Amazon account. Notes and highlights for unpublished books and documents are stored in the My Clippings file on your Kindle device. Below are the steps you need to follow to retrieve your notes and highlights for each kind of book.
For Purchased Books
- Go to your Amazon account to retrieve your notes and highlights. Sign in with your account username and password and click on Your Highlights. All the books you’ve made notes on are stored here.
If you don’t see the notes in your Amazon account, check your Kindle device. You’ll need to turn on the Annotations Backup feature that allows you to back up notes and highlights to your Amazon account.
a) Copy the notes and highlights you want to share, and paste them into a .txt file or a .docx file. Email this file to the author.
or…
b) If you use Evernote, and have the Evernote Clipper installed on your browser, you can it to send notes and highlights to Evernote.
From Evernote, you can share the notes and highlights with the author by clicking on the Share icon.
The notes and highlights will then show up in the author’s Evernote account.
I learned this trick from Audri and Jim Lanford’s article at Paperitis. If you’re an Evernote user you’ll appreciate the elegance of this approach.
For Personal Books and Documents
Your highlights and notes from personal documents are not stored in your Amazon account. They are stored in the Clippings file on your Kindle. Here’s how you access those notes so you can share them with the author.
- Plug your Kindle device into your computer.
- Find your Kindle device on your computer’s hard drive. Click on it.
- Click on the Documents folder (it might be spelled documents).
- Click on the My Clippings.txt file. The notes you’ve made for unpublished books and personal documents are stored in this file, so you’ll need to search for the title of the book you’re looking for (CTRL + F).
- Copy and paste your notes into a .docx file or a .txt file and email them to the author:
If you’d like a place to store these notes, you can copy them into Evernote and then share that note with the author as described above.
Clippings.io Method
If you don’t mind shelling out $2 per month, try the Clippings.io plug-in for Chrome. It’ll push your clippings to a Clippings.io account (free to set up) and you can manage your clippings from a central location.
You now have three ways to retrieve and share Kindle notes and highlights!
A special thanks to Len Edgerly at Kindle Chronicles for telling me about the My Clippings file and the Clippings.io plug-in.
Image by John Jones at Toolstotal