Share Book Quotes From Your Kindle to Twitter and Facebook

In my wanderings through the Kindle DX manual I came across a feature that I found quite intriguing in the form of being able to link your Kindle to social networking sites (at this stage Twitter and Facebook). I thought was a great little feature as I could share interesting or, more likely, humourous passages from the books I would be reading on my Kindle DX.

As per the instructions, linking your Kindle to your social networking accounts is supposed to be straightforward. All you should need to do is:

  1. Go to your home screen (press the “Home” button if you aren’t already there),
  2. Press the “Menu” button,
  3. Scroll down and select “Settings”,
  4. Scroll down and select “manage” next to “Social Networks”.

At this point, you should be able to select which social network you want to link to your Kindle and then authenticate to complete the process. Unfortunately, I ran into a problem which resulted in the following error:

You need to set your default 1-Click payment method and address. You can set it through the Manage Your Kindle page (https://www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle) or by calling Kindle Customer Service at 1-866-321-8851 (inside the United States) or 1-206-266-0927 (outside the United States).

To me, it seemed a bit odd that Amazon need you to enable 1-Click ordering in order to use social networking. The link between the two didn’t (and still doesn’t) seem apparent to me so I hope that Amazon looks into this and correct this issue in the short term.

Anyway, to get around it I went into my Amazon account on my computer and into the 1-Click Settings. I made sure that my default 1-Click address had a payment method added and that 1-Click ordering was activated. After that, I could link my social network accounts without a problem. What I did do afterwards was to turn off 1-Click ordering which didn’t affect my linked accounts.

When you want to share a passage from the book you are reading, simply move your cursor using the 5-way button to the beginning of the desired text, click the 5-way button and then scroll to the end of the desired text and click once more.

It’s a great way to share those little snippets of enlightenment, humour or interest with your friends and family but it’s also an interesting hook for Amazon to entice others to buy eBooks.

4 comments

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    • Corinna on July 2, 2011 at 01:47
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    I use this feature all of the time and I love it. Do you know if you can continue to share those messages overseas for no charge? Thanks in advance!

    1. Hi, Corinna!

      Yes, you can use this feature for no additional charge when roaming overseas (as well as the experimental web browser which I find really handy when I am not near a Wi-Fi hotspot).

    • Esen Kar on September 21, 2012 at 23:44
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    I bought my kindle in the US and I’m now using it in Turkey. I linked my FB and Twitter accounts to my Kindle but when I try to share content it says this content does not suppor sharing. Do you have any idea what the problem is? I converted epubs using Calibre, can it be the reason?

  1. Are the books from which you are attempting to share content bought whilst in Turkey or in the USA?

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