Apparently when you highlight a passage of a book on your kindle, it gets communicated back to amazon and aggregated on their website.
Although a tad creepy I guess (though I assume everything is suitably anonymized), this is very cool, not just for authors of kindle books but also for (prospective and actual) readers. It gives an "information by-product" summary of, if not necessarily the best, at least the most "impactful" parts of the book.
Here's the page for the no-s diet (currently "6210th most highlighted book on Kindle" -- not too shabby considering there are over half a million others).
http://kindle.amazon.com/work/the-no-s- ... B00149M3T2
The most highlighted passage in my book? Not my own words, but Winston Churchill's. I think that's a good indicator that these highlights actually convey something meaningful!
I haven't been able to find out whether amazon has released an API for accessing kindle highlight data, but I'd love to mess around with coding up some visualizations if and when they do...
If there are any kindling no-essers reading this, please highlight away if you haven't already. I can't promise I'll do anything useful with the information, but I find it utterly fascinating.
Reinhard
Most highlighted passages in No S Diet book
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