I have about a twenty Kindle ebooks on my iPad (mostly fiction–since they don’t require much note taking), but I’ve been slow to fully embrace that medium for two primary reasons:

(1) As bizarre as it sounds, I like looking at my library and seeing books that I’ve read. I can usually remember where I’ve read it, what it meant to me, etc… It’s a little stroll down memory lane and a book on my shelf is a mini-trophy that holds memories. Two days ago I was in a book store and I found a book I wanted that was $9.99 on Kindle and 16.99 at the store. While the electronic format was cheaper, I wanted this particular book on my shelf. I know, I’m weird.

(2) I can’t read a nonfiction book without marking it up. I underline, I circle, I code, I star, highlight, etc… I do all that in case I might use that material in a message, a book, article, blog, etc… I’ve found this difficult to do on Kindle. While it’s easy to highlight sentences on the Kindle, I’ve found them difficult to retrieve and utilize in a easy-to-use format.

While I’ll still need to struggle with #1, #2 just got a whole lot easier thanks to Michael Hyatt (by far the best blogger that I follow) and Evernote (which is an app I’ve been using for several months). When I read his post today, I immediately tried his 8 steps and then did a little dance. His guidance is going to be a game-changer for me!

If this interests you, you need to read Michael Hyatt’s helpful and detailed post to better understand these 8 steps:
1. Create your highlights as usual.
2. Log into your unique Amazon Kindle page.
3. Click on Your Books.
4. Select the appropriate book.
5. Click on the Evernote Web Clipper.
6. Select the appropriate notebook and tags.
7. Go to Evernote and make sure the new note is there.
8. Copy and paste your highlights to other applications as needed.

[below is a screen shot from Michael Hyatt's post]

With the ease of electronic books and future of more/better/easier productivity tools I’m sure it will become a lot more intuitive to do this naturally. For now, it’s not natural and will require some work, but the great news is that my underlining and notes can be retrieved easier. That’s exciting to me!

Now, I just need to figure out if I need more books in my library, why I think I need them, and what I like about them. I’m hoping Cathy doesn’t read this post because she’ll often say, “Another book?” (my books are all over the house). I actually think Cathy might be more excited about Michael Hyatt than me.


Question: How do you retrieve the material you’ve read, underlined, noted, etc…? Share your method here.