How to Use Kindle Public Notes

One of Amazon Kindle's least known features allows you to peek over the reader’s shoulder, to follow people of interest to you and see their Public Notes on what they're reading.

And once you enable Kindle Public Notes for a particular book, then any of your followers can see the highlights and notes you make, as you read on Kindle.

There are some problems with the service. Amazon has chosen to limit each note to 100 characters, which means lots of notes are cut off mid-stream. They also register people as having made Public Notes for a book when they have simply turned on the feature. Oh, Amazon!

But it's a great way to share your thoughts and create a dialogue and conversation that dives more deeply into a book — and it would be great to see more people using the feature.

The possibilities are intriguing: Zadie Smith on Salman Rushdie, Slavoj Žižek's on Russell Brand…

You can find out more about public notes here: https://kindle.amazon.com/faq#PublicNotes1

Find your own reading at https://kindle.amazon.com, where you can see your highlights and notes and opt in our out of making them public for any particular book.

And if you fancy seeing what I think about books as I read them on my kindle, you can follow me here: https://kindle.amazon.com/profile/Orna-Ross/2628788