How to Save Your Clippings Outside the Kindle (or Nook or Kobo) Reading App

Interested in saving your clippings and highlights to the web from a single e-book reading device?

All of the larger e-book systems like Kindle, Nook, and Kobo have apps that can be installed on a device like the iPad, and from there you can access all the features available to that particular reading system. (By “system” I mean the device, the delivery system, the reading interface and the online content purchase and management tools.) If the Nook system, for example, allows you to store and view your highlights in the cloud, then you can use that feature when using their system. (They don’t.)

So what can you do if you want to view your clippings on the web but have run into “clipping limit exceeded” (see related post) in the Kindle reader, or if you are using a reader app on the iPad that doesn’t offer cloud-based clippings at all?

My favorite workaround

I like to save all my highlighted passages (or at least the ones I want to access anytime) to Google Keep, a lesser known tool for notekeeping, bookmarking, and doodling. If you install the Google Keep app on the iPad that houses the reader apps, when you highlight a passage and tap the share/save icon (box with arrow emerging from the top) you can save the highlight directly to your Google Keep timeline, where it can be tagged for future reference. The book title will be saved with the highlight.

So, if you want a “multi-platform ebook reader which can store bookmarks & highlights on the cloud like Kindle,” you need to use a tablet like an iPad or possibly an Android tablet and “save” your highlights to Google Keep.

I have also written on this topic in my feed at Quora. Please follow me there!