# Syncing Bookmarks, Notes & Highlights on Non-Kindle Books



## clearnew (Dec 3, 2010)

Hello Everyone!

I've searched the boards and have found some threads that come close to answering my question but at the same time just miss the mark. I really hope I'm not duplicating here.

I do most of my reading in bed. I also like to "actively" read my books so I do my fair share of bookmarking, highlighting and note taking while I read. Of course with my wonderful Kindle, I can do all of this right on the Kindle! My problem comes in when I want to sync to all of my marks, highlights and notes to my Kindle account so I can then access them on my iMac for journalling.

This system works great of course for books purchase via the Kindle store but other books that I've either downloaded or purchased else where and converted via Calibre do not sync to the Kindle account online then to my iMac.

Is there a setting or a method I can use to get this working?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.


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## SusanCassidy (Nov 9, 2008)

Amazon simply does not do it for books you got from elsewhere.  Sorry.


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## David Derrico (Nov 18, 2009)

As Susan said, the syncing of notes & highlights is something Amazon only does for books purchased through the Kindle store. But you can copy the "My Clippings.txt" file from the Kindle onto your computer to at least access your notes that way.


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## TheKindleWorm (Sep 11, 2010)

You cannot sync non-amazon books to your Kindle account - full stop. Amazon don't support it.

If you are willing to try a workaround where ALL your notes/highlights on any book are stored online for you to then copy and use elsewhere try:

http://www.kinworm.com/2010/12/easy-copying-and-printing-of-all-your.html


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## Joe Chiappetta (May 20, 2010)

Yes. The only workaround is to transfer the My Clippings.txt file from the Kindle to your computer. This is what I do when I have written something on Kindle and want to save it even if i a nonAmazon ebook. What is inconvenient is that we have to connect the usb cord to get the My Clippings file off of the device. I wish Amazon would just allow us to send the file as an attachment. Of course outgoing user attachments are not permitted on Kindle. This is one of the problems that I think will make the Kindle obsolete as more versatile devices enter the market with similar eink screens.


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## Jodi O (Mar 3, 2010)

TheKindleWorm said:


> You cannot sync non-amazon books to your Kindle account - full stop. Amazon don't support it.
> 
> If you are willing to try a workaround where ALL your notes/highlights on any book are stored online for you to then copy and use elsewhere try:
> 
> http://www.thekindleworm.com/2010/12/easy-copying-and-printing-of-all-your.html


Just tried this method and it works very well. But...in my dreams, what I would really want is to send my notes and highlights (amazon and non-amazon) directly to my Evernote account.


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## TheKindleWorm (Sep 11, 2010)

Desertway said:


> Just tried this method and it works very well. But...in my dreams, what I would really want is to send my notes and highlights (amazon and non-amazon) directly to my Evernote account.


I don't know if Evernote still accept posts from Twitter that then get stored as notes? I read somewhere that they used to have this functionality. If so, I guess you could set that up with Evernote and then post your highlights from the Kindle to Twitter using the same method I described. You'd have to set up your Twitter account on your Kindle as well.

Just a thought/guess. I don't have a twitter account so won't be testing this out myself.


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## Jodi O (Mar 3, 2010)

TheKindleWorm said:


> I don't know if Evernote still accept posts from Twitter that then get stored as notes? I read somewhere that they used to have this functionality. If so, I guess you could set that up with Evernote and then post your highlights from the Kindle to Twitter using the same method I described. You'd have to set up your Twitter account on your Kindle as well.
> 
> Just a thought/guess. I don't have a twitter account so won't be testing this out myself.


I thought about doing that, but wouldn't we be limited to the 140 character limit for the text? I had a twitter account for about 10 minutes before it drove me crazy.


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## clearnew (Dec 3, 2010)

Sorry everyone! I posed this then forgot about it!

Thank you very much for your replies. I kind of figured that it was a no go like reading non-Kindle books in the Kindle reader on my desktop.

I'm not really not too keen about the way Amazon really locks down the Kindle but it's such a kick-butt gadget so I'm willing to live with that.

Thanks a bunch!


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## ff2 (Oct 20, 2010)

Someone recently posted a method of tweaking some bytes in NON-amazon book files that apparently fools the amazon server and allows syncing. It is discussed

http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kindle_Sync_with_non-Amazon_eBooks

It may not be for the non-hacker types


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## ethomp (Feb 7, 2011)

FWIW, it only syncs the furthest page read info. If you use Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/), you don't have to worry about looking up the ASIN. That also means it will work with any document and not just those in Amazon's catalog. This feature was added very recently (2/4 in version 0.7.44) to Calibre. There are Calibre versions for Mac, Windows and Linux.

It works great with my Kindle 3, the iPad app, and the Kindle app on my Mac. I don't think this will work well for non-Amazon books that have DRM.

Calibre is nice because it doesn't require much technical expertise and everything is included.

There's another thread at MobiRead about it. http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=113315


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