Kindle Secret Exposed: Popular Highlights Reveal Content That Clicks

If only you could really get into the minds of your readers and find out what makes them tick, what makes them click, right?

You already can find out what your readers’ questions are but that’s the other side of what makes them nod their head, snap their fingers and go “yes, yes! that’s it – that’s so true!”

Sentiment Analysis

What you need is some kind of sentiment analysis. A finger on the pulse.

One tool for finding out what captures the hearts and minds of your readers is the Amazon Kindle.

Readers can highlight passages on the Amazon Kindle. When your highlights sync with your Amazon Kindle account they get shared with Amazon.

Amazon aggregates those highlights into Popular Highlights.

Those highlights can show you exactly what clicks with readers.

Six Views On What People Want You To Write

Amazon provides four views on popular highlights and two ways to search popular highlights.

The first view shows you which passages are the most highlighted ever.

Here you see that over 2000 Kindle readers clicked with this passage. It says a lot that of all the books being read on Kindle, this quote about work, autonomy, complexity and a connection between effort and reward is the most highlighted. What can it tell you about your audience? About which angle to use to approach them? How to talk with them? How to start the conversation so they feel respected and satisfied?

The most highlighted books of all time is just as interesting a view. In the top 10 we see 3 Bible related entries, 2 productivity books, 2 life self-help books.

We see engagement with content (Bible, Bible study) and we see how people want to change their life, make it meaningful, add value, be better, and have processes that facilitate this.

It’s not just the passages that help you understand your readers; it's what they read and how they interact with it.

This view is similar to most highlighted passages but emphasizes recency.

This is a truly awesome way of seeing what’s hot right now; of what’s up and coming, what’s happening now, what is catching reader's’ attention today.

Like most highlighted books but with the emphasis on recent highlights.

Again, it’s not just the highlights themselves, it’s also the books. What you’re looking at, this is what’s happening now. This is aggregate data of what clicks with thousands of readers right now.

You can also search the popular highlights.

Search returns results from again two dimensions: books and passages.

When I search popular highlights for the words “the stand”, Amazon returns the book “The Stand” – one of my favorite Stephen King books –  but also results for the highlight the stand.

You can “zoom in” on either of these:

These are tremendously powerful content and keyword research searches.

For example, if you’re in a golf niche, then this is what clicks with your audience:

Seems to me they want to hear it’s in the mind.

Are you talking on that level to your audience? On the level where it clicks with what matters to them?