The velvet-covered diary

Exporting Kindle highlights is weird

I recently wrote a review for The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green on my primary blog. I thought it would be suitable to take a look at my highlights from the book, because 1) it's been a while since I've last touched that book, for some of the earlier chapters, it's been more than a year, and 2) it would be great to include a selection of quotes as part of my review.

So I sought to make an export of sorts, for the highlights I saved when reading the book via the Kindle apps, and it turned out to be harder than I thought.

First, there's a web page on amazon that lists highlights for Kindle books. Unfortunately, they are only for "actual books" purchased from the store. All of my other books are considered documents which I send (via email, transfer, etc) in epub/mobi formats to my Kindle instead.

I then went to the iOS Kindle app to see if there are any export options. I found one, but there was a message saying "email is not set up". What email? The only email I can think of is the send-to-kindle email, which is already set up and I frequently use it to send books. I searched for this online, and it turns out that the feature requires an outgoing email handler to be set up on the device. For me, this means re-installing the Apple Mail app, and signing in to an account that allows outgoing mails. No other email client works.

I did just that. The export button opened up the Mail app's compose view with an attachment -- a HTML export of all my highlights from the book. I then needed to enter another email address to send it to. Naturally, I send it myself.

Hang on, WTF? Why not just let me download that HTML file directly? I first had to set up an email account (using a specific Mail app), then enter another email address to send an email to. Of course, these could be the same address, but this isn't entirely obvious to the leyman, and it's somewhat a workaround: was this feature designed with the intention of having the user send an email to oneself? If not, why would the default assumption be for the user to send the highlights to someone else via email?

In case this isn't clear: what I've described is for the Kindle app, on iOS, not the physical Kindle. It beats me as to why the HTML export option doesn't just open a native "share" dialog or anything simpler.

As for the Kindle device, I couldn't find any exporting option other than a full "Your Clippings" document that contains all highlights from all books and documents on my Kindle. I can't think of any scenario where that would be useful.

Anyway, I'm glad that I could at least obtain a good export in the end. I wouldn't expect something like a CSV export be possible, but the HTML file shows you the chapter that each highlight was made and the highlight's color -- good enough for my needs.

It's only the second ever review I've published on my blog, and possibly the fourth ever book review I've written. Looking forward to hone my skills by writing more, and along the way, incentive to read more books.

I just hope the situation for the highlight export feature either gets better or stays the same way as it is now.

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