Summary
- Long waits between book releases can make details fade, but Amazon’s Recaps feature for Kindle helps jog your memory.
- Recaps give quick summaries with key plot points for popular book series, accessible in the Kindle app.
- AI is used to generate these quick summaries, aiming to help readers jump back into stories without rereading.
Waiting months or even years for the next book in a series can really mess with your memory. Those long waits between releases—thanks, author and publisher schedules—mean key details tend to fade. And sure, you could go back and reread the last book, but who has time for that? That’s where Amazon steps in.
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After launching it on Prime Video, Amazon is rolling out the Recaps feature on Kindle to help jog your memory and get you back in the story without all the re-reading. Think of it like those “Previously on…” moments from your favorite shows, as per Amazon’s press release. Now, when you dive back into a book series, AI-powered Recaps will give you the quick-and-dirty on what went down, so you can hop right back into the story without flipping back hundreds of pages.
It’s live for US Kindle users for now on popular English series
These quick recaps—unlike the spoiler-free ones on Prime Video—do give away key plot points, so heads up. Currently, they’re available to Kindle users in the US for a bunch of top-selling English-language book series. Amazon didn’t name-drop AI in its announcement, but the company later confirmed to TechCrunch that AI is doing the heavy lifting to keep you from flipping back pages.
You’ll know a book series has Recaps if you see a “View Recaps” button on its Kindle library page. You can also find it tucked inside the three-dot menu when looking at your grouped series in the Kindle app.
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Some users on Reddit have raised eyebrows over how accurate these AI-generated recaps really are. In the meantime, Amazon swears the summaries stick close to the actual story and are meant to make life easier for readers, especially when juggling complex plots and character arcs. The goal is to help you jump back in without killing the joy of the story.
To use Recaps, you’ll need the latest Kindle firmware. You can either grab it manually from Amazon’s site or just wait for the over-the-air update to roll in. Amazon is also planning to bring the feature to the Kindle app on iOS soon.
