Something that’s given me a real surge of pride and joy lately has been discovering the Kindle “Shared Notes & Highlights” section for each of my books.
Notes and Highlights are, well, notes and highlights that readers create in any book or document on their Kindle. These comments can be kept private or shared publicly. If they are shared publicly, they’ll be collected and displayed on that book’s Amazon page, near the bottom (see screenshot, right or go to this example and scroll 4/5ths of the way down the page).
For example, This passage from A Reason to Live has been highlighted 29 times:
A thing you never expected, could not have predicted, suddenly becomes the foremost event in your life and no amount of wishing it away will work.
For a writer this is a real kick, and pretty valuable stuff, because it’s close to a real-time rating of not just your book, but sentences and paragraphs, as well. You’ll see how many times a particular section has been highlighted (giving you a rough index of how striking or popular it was). And if the reader added a Note, that will be displayed right along with it. All of a book’s Notes and Highlights can be seen by clicking on the “See all Notes & Highlights” link.
For a reader, you can review the highlights of others on your Kindle or on the Amazon book page, save them, comment, or share them. All your Notes and Highlights, no matter where you saved them from (and regardless of whether they’re public or private) are accessible at https://kindle.amazon.com/your_highlights.
If you have a published work, visit your page and take a look down at the bottom of the page. You might surprised to see what your readers have picked out!