Tristan Homsi

Readwise Beta - Effortlessly rediscover and organize your Kindle highlights

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Readwise sends you a daily email which helps you retain & organize your Kindle highlights effortlessly ✨ Resurface, categorize, and actually remember the lessons from books you read.

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Tristan Homsi
Hey PH! We're huge fans of Kindle, but we were pained by how hard it is to revisit and organize your highlights. It would often feel like we'd read a book and have phenomenal new insights, only to forget them a couple months later. Readwise sends you a daily email with some of your best past highlights, helping you actually remember what you read. We also let you effortlessly tag and rate your highlights. This lets you organize the insights you had from your books, turning them into long-lasting wisdom. The main features: - πŸ’« Effortlessly sync your Kindle highlights - πŸ“¬ Receive an email with some of your best highlights, every day - πŸ’Œ Categorize your highlights with different tags e.g "entrepreneurship", "happiness" - πŸ€“ Never forget what you learned from a book again Even if you don't read on Kindle, we'd love to hear what you think about the product and where you'd like us to import highlights from next! We're huge reading nerds, and are just getting started on our mission of improving how people read and learn from books.
Aishwarya Hariharan
@homsit I just signed up and it looks great :D I sometimes forget that I can go through my highlights and this is a great way of reminding me of books I've read and loved :) I also love that you a) sent me an email immediately with my highlights and b) recommended a book to me based on the insights. Kudos!
Tristan Homsi
@ashpapoye thanks so much for the feedback Aishwarya! It means a lot πŸ™ do let us know if you think of any way we can make Readwise even better.
Conrad Irwin

There's something really fun about being able to highlight part of a book and get it reiterated over email β€” passive learning is really important if you're trying to retain lots of information.

Pros:

Finally a reason to highlight stuff in Kindle! I've been looking for a way to organize the information I've pulled out of books.

Cons:

It's still really early, it wasn't quite clear how some of the features (like deletion) work, but overall seems solid.

Tristan Homsi
Thanks Conrad! We're working hard on making the mental models for our users simpler and more clear. More to come soon :)
Wojtek Nosowski
Nice. I thought of something similar but for highlights across kindle, instapaper and chrome. Used Google Keep for ssaving and tagging quotes but it's buggy. Good luck!
Tristan Homsi
@outhipped Thanks Wojtek! Would love to hear more about that project -- I'm tristan@readwise.io
Jacob Simon

I actually stumbled upon Readwise in searching for a way increase the efficiency of the time I spend reading. It's been awesome to see it grow from 5 highlights in an email to the customization features today. Not only has it succeeded in helping me to retain more of the books I've read, it's also encouraged me to form positive habits around highlighting key sections as I read.

Pros:

I love how it keeps the things I've read fresh in my mind, and incentivizes me to pay attention to key passages as I read

Cons:

Some limitations around organizing highlights into groups but the newest features are making strong strides in that direction

Tristan Homsi
Thanks for being candid Jacob. We're still figuring out the best way to implement tagging and organization in a way that's useful. This article is very much front of mind: https://praxis.fortelabs.co/tagg... More to come on this front soon!
ThΓ©o Blochet
I've had this on my side-project to-do list for a while now - really glad someone tackled this problem and got past the lack of decent API implementation from both Amazon and Goodreads for fetching highlights (besides https://read.amazon.com/notebook nobody knows about). Congrats to the team for shipping this! If you read a ton of non-fiction, going back to a particular excerpt can be a pain. Once you invest enough in ReadWise, this might very well be a solved problem. (Plus the deep links to the kindle app are so useful to see the highlight in context πŸ™Œ) Another use case this could solve for is this moment when you read a paragraph and really want to share it with a boss/colleague/friend because it's so relevant to them. But you're outside, sitting in the grass in a park. With your WIFI ad-supported Kindle. Because you're cheap and wanted to save $90. So you highlight and forget. If ReadWise manages to get you engaged with that content again, problem solved again πŸ˜€ A couple of ideas/friction points that are probably already on your roadmap I thought I'd share here : β€’ I made 202 highlights in one book, and can't search them via the UI (but thank you for not including any pagination, so I can ⌘+F them πŸ’―) β€’ Could I navigate these 202 highlights by chapter of the book? β€’ I want to bundle a bunch of highlights and share them with a friend via a unique link β€’ I want to share all highlights of a book I just finished with my colleague β€’ I want to associate a note to a highlight, so that I, or the person I share it to, understand the context behind why I highlighted that note β€’ Etc, etc πŸ˜‡ PS : I am (very?) biased against products that claim to "summarize a book for you" or "let you read a book in just 15 mins", and when I read "ReadWise" for the first time, that's what the name made me thought the product was about. "ReadWise" doesn't really imply the notion of "collecting" or "building wisdom" that an easy to parse database of highlights could.
Tristan Homsi
Hey @theoblochet, thanks for taking the time to give us feedback in such detail -- we seriously appreciate it. > I made 202 highlights in one book, and can't search them via the UI (but thank you for not including any pagination, so I can ⌘+F them πŸ’―) Hah, yeah, a proper search is definitely on our todo! Glad cmd+f could tide you over (we love it too πŸ‘Œ) > Could I navigate these 202 highlights by chapter of the book? Hopefully soon! This data (essentially a location->chapter mapping) is not easily accessible anywhere, but we have a couple ideas on it. As users, we definitely want this too :P > I want to bundle a bunch of highlights and share them with a friend via a unique link Right on. We really like the idea of this style of 1to1 sharing (moreso than bulk sharing like on facebook). > I want to associate a note to a highlight, so that I, or the person I share it to, understand the context behind why I highlighted that note We're overdue to add this -- we'll ship it soon and let you know! >Readwise name Hehe, we're all about reading smarter (even reading wiser perhaps?), not reading shallower, so we're on the same page with you! The name speaks more to our broader aspirations of being more than just a highlight management tool, but that's a bit of a way off :) Thanks again dude, we'll stay in touch!
Cory Bray
I've been using Readwise (f/k/a Rekindled) for a few months and LOVE IT! Like the Dos Equis guy...I don't read all the time, but when I do, I re-inforce it with Readwise. It's a graet product with a talented and passionate team behind it!
Will Hoekenga

Readwise is just a really cool way to enhance your reading experience. I love the feeling when I highlight something now that I know I'm going to see it again.

The email digest is already one of my favorite things in my inbox, but I'm also really excited to see them continue building out the actual "hub" for my highlights. It has the chance to be the best record of your reading habits and thoughts on books.

I highly recommend all readers give it a try.

Pros:

Gets the best parts from books I like back in front of my face. Since I know I'll see my highlights again, it's changed the way I highlight.

Cons:

I've been really impressed with how they've consistently improved it already, but automatic syncing would be cool if it's possible.

Tristan Homsi
Thanks Will :) Automatic syncing would be incredible. Unfortunately we haven't quite figured out a good way to implement it yet -- feels mostly infeasible until Amazon creates an API for Kindle highlights.
Lyndall Schreiner

Overall, great way to have small reminders of your books and the ideas that you found important when reading them. Looking forwards to my favourites coming up again.

Pros:

Awesome to revisit books I read a while ago; Nice clean email format; Provides daily inspiration (depends on what you highlight!)

Cons:

Maybe everyday is a little too much, would like to set the days I get the email

Kenna
This is great. It has some of the features that I loved with Readmill. Do you plan on having profiles and more social sharing capabilities?
Tristan Homsi
Key @kenna, thanks for this! Glad you like it. We're currently still hyper-focused on giving readers the best way to organize and retain what they read. What really excites us, moreso than social, is making books a better way to learn. That being said, anything is possible -- super interested to hear more about why you loved Readmill.
Kenna
@homsit I see. Then the only difference right now with Amazon's native highlights page are tags and favourites. Although I'm not sure how favourites work, cos if I highlighted something, aren't they a favourite already? In Amazon you can search which is not available with Readwise. I would like to see a tag cloud and drag and drop functionalities. Because to be honest, I will not go through all my highlights just to tag each of them. Another thing, I've been looking for something like this for years now and I mainly use the old school pen and paper because I read on both Kindly and iBooks and also quite a lot of physical books, a possible integration for all of them perhaps? Although the daily email for me is already a winner.
Tristan Homsi
@kenna Gotcha. For favorites, we've found that people usually indeed highlight what they like, but there are a few highlights per book which really draw out some insight or make an impact on the person -- favoriting is usually for those :) Searching: to come soon! :) Tagging gripes: I hear you. We've actually built a clever way to tag your highlights as you make them while reading, which may help. I'll shoot you an email about how it works in a bit. Different reading integrations: for sure! We're very excited to add integrations for different platforms. iBooks sounds interesting, I'll do some digging into how feasible it is to get the highlights out of it.
Tristan Homsi
@kenna Aha, glad to hear it! The iBooks import is still a bit experimental, so definitely let me know how it works for you :)
Doug Lane
I really enjoyed using Readwise during the private beta. It was fun to re-surface things that I once found interesting (but soon after forgot about), and I now find myself highlighting more often. It was clear from all of my interactions with the team that you guys are listening to users and really thinking hard about how to make the service great. Congrats on the milestone!
Alexandre Tang

Excited to see innovation in a space which hasn't seen much of it in the past!

Pros:

An improvement over the Kindle note taking function. Really enjoy discovering new books with the recommended highlights feature

Cons:

Still in the early stages of development - would love to see a mobile app one day

Nick Neuman
This looks awesome - I'm excited to see some of the things I've highlighted because right now they just go into the Amazon abyss. Two questions: 1. Have you thought about allowing for setting the frequency of emails? Changing from daily to weekly, for example? 2. What is the Chrome extension for? It asked me to install it as part of sign-up, but doesn't seem to do anything except load the website (have to right click on it, left clicking doesn't do anything). What am I missing? Great work on this!
Tristan Homsi
@nneuman Hey Nick, thanks so much for the feedback. Looking forward to having you as a user! To your questions: 1. Absolutely! We have this setting hidden a bit hidden away right now, but you can actually go here: https://readwise.io/preferences/... to choose to receive your emails less frequently. Let me know how that works :) 2. The chrome(or safari) extension is actually needed to sync your highlights from Kindle. Clearly we don't do a good job of explaining this though -- I just added a message to the onboarding flow to help make this more clear. Good catch!
Daniel Wang

The developers have been amazing in requesting feedback and implementing new features. The product is still early, but I have no doubt that it will continue to improve in future iterations.

Pros:

Simplicity

Cons:

Light on customizability

John Manoogian III

I love it and can't wait to see what the future holds for Readwise.

Pros:

The service I've been searching for to make sense of my massive pile of ebook highlights

Cons:

Automatic syncing would be nice, as would grouping books by topic or date

Cory Bray

There's no point in reading a book if you're going to forget everything. Use Readwise and retain your knowledge!

Pros:

It reinforces what I read so I get more value out of my reading time

Cons:

Keep doing what you're doing!

Jonathan David Martin

I think its a fun and novel concept for an app with a lot of potential for social networking. It looks like there is some machine learning going on behind the scenes that will continue to zero in on my exact reading interests as the user base grows. I'm really intrigued to learn more about similarities I have with other people who highlighted the same excepts.

Pros:

I like being reminded via email about various excerpts or quotes I've highlighted. It's inspirational for me to reread them regularly.

Cons:

I like the book recommendations based on my highlights and look forward to seeing how these continue to be refined.

Akshay Gupta
Awful Experience syncing all my content to Notion. And then another awful experience trying to get a response from the customer support team once they realised that redoing the entire setup twice or thrice doesn't seem to work either! Been 11+ days without a response and no Notion Sync. Quite pointless without it for me honestly.
Akshay Gupta
@akshaymotorsport 22 days without a response from the customer support team! The product still doesn't work!!
Alexander J Snyder

Overall, fantastic idea and execution.

Pros:

i went from never highlighting to making it a pleasant habit. readwise really helps me get more out of the reading I do.

Cons:

I'd trade all the tea in China for automatic syncing of highlights.

Charles Miller

Killer app for anyone who's ever plowed through a dense text and had trouble carrying a conversation about it a week later!

Pros:

Incredibly simple way to increase retention particularly for fans of non-fiction. Also a fun way to be reminded of your favorite passages.

Cons:

None

Swami Venkataramani
So useful! Would be nice to also see all the popular highlights in a book.