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Evernote Essentials

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**At last — The #1 best-selling guide to Evernote is available for Kindle**

New Evernote users spend several hours or days watching outdated video and searching the web — just to figure out the best ways to use it.

Over 30,000 new Evernote users have jump-started their Evernote skills using Evernote Essentials: a fun, informative guide written in plain English that tells you everything you need to know to get off to a great start with Evernote.

Evernote Essentials was the first English-language guide published. Now, in its fourth revision, it's bigger and better than ever.

160 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 26, 2013

60 people are currently reading
358 people want to read

About the author

Brett Kelly

1 book57 followers

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5 stars
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146 (33%)
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37 (8%)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
Profile Image for Bojan Đorđević.
4 reviews2 followers
January 25, 2013
For 25$ there could be a lot more value added. Luckily there is a money back guarantee, so if you don't find it worth your money and time, ask for a refund.

This book seems like an absolute starting point for complete Evernote beginners. if you've been using Evernote for some time, you won't extract too much value from this book.

If you want my in-depth opinion on it, you can find it here: http://alphaefficiency.com/review-eve...
Profile Image for Autumn Shuler.
98 reviews1 follower
November 21, 2014
Note: I have absolutely zero affiliation with Brett Kelly - this gushing is genuine.

I picked up Evernote Essentials after reading about it on a blog. I've used Evernote casually for a little while now, but I've always felt there was a lot more it could offer me, and I was simply too overwhelmed by the possibilities to make the best use of it.

That being said, a decent chunk of the book was simply review for me. However, the new information that it gave me was well worth the price of the book (which I'll continue to receive updated versions for as they come out -- how amazing is that!). But gaining good information in a clear manner would only have gained this book a 3-star rating. After all, it's a technical manual, and that's what they're supposed to do.

But it's not just a technical manual. I actually enjoyed reading this guide. Now, that's not extremely unusual, being a bit of an amateur technical writer myself. I often enjoy a good manual simply because I can admire the craft. But this wasn't that kind of enjoyment. This was actual entertainment.

Kelly's voice rings through in every page of this guide, and that voice is funny. I feel like he and I could be friends (really nerdy friends that talk about Evernote a lot, but that's still friendship) if we ever met. There were bits of this book that made me laugh out loud. I laughed out loud. While reading a technical guide about a computer program. I'll let that sink in for a moment.

Yeah, it's impressive.

If you're curious about Evernote and don't know where to begin, this is the book for you. If you have used Evernote for a while but want a little refresher about its functions while potentially learning some tricks you didn't know before, this is the book for you. If you are a nerd like me and want to read a good manual to help with your own technical writing skills, this is the book for you. If you simply want some edutainment (educational entertainment, for those of you who aren't as hip to the lingo as this chick), this is the book for you.

TL;DR: This book is great. I laughed and learned. Buy it.

Profile Image for Arthur Cravan.
491 reviews27 followers
January 20, 2014
This is some pretty basic stuff. Still looking for a 'rip the hood off of Evernote' book, if such a thing exists (or maybe I'm just overthinking Evernote).
11 reviews
June 6, 2014
While there was some good material in this book, I felt that it was way too light to be useful. The education level it's written for is junior high, and there are a lot of 'fluff' sentences included that try to set a conversational tone for this technical material.

My needs are for a much more technical, in-depth book that I feel need to read and re-read to digest all of the information. This book is like an outline of the book that it should have been. I hope that Brett makes a more solid book as the next edition. If he can figure out how to balance the features of the different platforms that Evernote runs on along with their practical uses with a level of detail that is useful, his book would definitely be worth $25.

I hope that he chooses to do so, as I'd be willing to by that book.
Profile Image for Kalyn.
Author 3 books66 followers
March 23, 2015
I bought this book based on the recommendation of another blogger, but I can't say I was overly wowed by it, especially for the $12.99 Kindle price. But I did like the way the author broke down the many uses of Evernote {I think I'm still a bit confused with the search function capabilities though}, and the case studies/examples he provided at the end were very helpful. Definitely got me into organizing my Evernote a bit more strategically, for sure.
Profile Image for AYAH.
107 reviews
January 5, 2015
I LOVE EVERNOTE! It makes my life as a grad student so much easier! I loved it the moment I knew that I can search text in images! (I actually teared up when I found out such a thing is possible!!!!!) This book is a great intro to Evernote, but I've been using the good green elephant for a year & I learned many great tips from this book..
Profile Image for Dara Saoyuth.
8 reviews22 followers
March 24, 2016
Must say it is a good book to help you remember everything so that you could have a clear head for real work.
Profile Image for Sara Brandt.
Author 18 books3 followers
March 23, 2016

Brett Kelly ist mittlerweile eine Berühmtheit, zumindest in kleineren Kreisen. Das erste Mal las ich von ihm im „The 100 Startup“ von Chris Guillebeau (Dazu folgt später auch noch eine Rezension). Nach einem finanziellen Rückschlag hat Brett dieses Ebook entwickelt, was ein voller Erfolg wurde- und nun arbeitet er selbst für Evernote.

Doch genug der Vorgeschichte, kommen wir zu der Rezension.

Die gute Nachricht vorab: „Evernote Essentials“ ist tatsächlich ein Rundumschlag. Egal, ob ihr einen Mac oder Windows- Pc benutzt, ob Android oder Iphone, es wird auf jedes einzelne System eingegangen. Und das nicht lang und breit, sondern so, dass es auf das Wesentliche reduziert ist- ohne dabei an Witz einzusparen. Brett hat eine wirklich sehr angenehme Art, zu schreiben und Wissen zu vermitteln. Hier und da findet ihr auch amüsante Fotos von ihm oder Websiten, die er als Beispielnotiz verwendet (wer das Buch bereits gelesen hat, den erinnere ich hier nur kurz an die Waffel- Beispiele).

Alles, was ihr schon immer wissen wolltet, findet ihr in diesem Buch. Wie ihr einen Account erstellt, wofür ihr Evernote nutzen könnt, wie ihr Notizen anlegt, was ein „Notizbuch“ ist, was ein „Stack“ ist. Oder wie ihr Tags benutzt, die Suchfunktion… eben alles, was sich rund um die faszinierende Welt von Evernote dreht. Jeder einzelne Punkt wird genau erklärt, vom Anfang bis zum Ende. Nichts wird ausgelassen. Und mit den Beispielen, die Brett zeigt, wird auch nichts unverständlich bleiben.

Auf der anderen Seite ist das teilweise auch ein Nachteil. Für Anfänger oder Menschen, die einfach mit Evernote einsteigen wollen, ist das der perfekte Leitfaden. Die 10,99 Euro (war mein letzter Stand) sind gut investiert, keine Frage.

Mir dagegen hat es nicht sooo viel gebracht. Zwar konnte ich hier und da auch für mich sehr nützliche Informationen herausfiltern, wie etwa der Tipp mit den Tags und dem Notizbuchstapel. Aber wenn man schon länger mit Evernote hantiert und selber mal den ein oder anderen Button ausprobiert, wird man in „Evernote Essentials“ nicht sehr fündig. Geschadet hat es mir aber auf jeden Fall nicht, ganz im Gegenteil: Wenn ich eines aus diesem Buch gezogen habe, dann ist es Inspiration. Und zwar für mein nächstes Buchprojekt. Falls ich das nach oder auch während „Schattenengel“ wirklich angehe, erfahrt ihr das hier natürlich als Erstes, keine Sorge ;)
Author 2 books7 followers
May 3, 2015
Evernote Essentials is a shallow, unfulfilling guide to Evernote. I use Evernote every day - it's a good service and an important part of organising my life - and I had hoped this guide would be a good reference for 'power users'. Let's face it: anyone buying a book about Evernote is almost certainly a power user, and so a book about the topic needs to go beyond a few help pages and Top Tips. But this book is a facile analysis, the most cursory of overviews of Evernote's functionality. The entire chapter 'Evernote in Your Pocket', for example, could be distilled into the sentence "you can use Evernote on smartphones and tablets". Maybe there just isn't that much in Evernote beyond the obvious, but this raises an obvious question - why write a book about it?

Kelly's book lacks the insight and writing flair required to make this book great. The writing is sloppy in both structure and style; any useful information is lost between the endless jokes in parentheses (and the unforgivable sin is that the jokes aren't even funny). There are a few nuggets of truth in here, but nothing beyond a Lifehacker article, and certainly nothing worth the cost of entry or the effort of reading.
Profile Image for Sandeep.
31 reviews36 followers
September 22, 2013
This is a must read for anyone who wants to make the most out of Evernote. Learning how to use Evernote on your computer or mobile device has done wonders for every task I need to accomplish because it allows me to take everything that it is out of my head and put it into one database where I can execute tasks on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

This book will teach you everything you need to know about Evernote because it goes into detail about all of its features. I was able to incorporate the Getting Things Done (GTD) system into Evernote perfectly and it has made my life so much easier and efficient.

It only took me 25 minutes to go through the whole book and about a afternoon to fully implement all the strategies the book provided into Evernote.

I highly recommend this book to any person who wants to avoid losing ideas, forgetting tasks that need to be done, and needs a system to see everything life throws at him in one place instead of in a stack of written to-do lists/papers that don't see the light of day.
2 reviews
December 30, 2013
Evernote is a great app, but it's overwhelming at first. For a long time I kept changing how I used it and how I organised my notes, never really sure I was doing it right. Twice I realised I had thrown so much crap into it and in such a haphazard way that it was just a digital junk drawer that I didn't want to open. And then I read this book. It clarified many things and helped me define a plan on how to best use Evernote. Now it's a key part of my digital life.

This book is 160 pages. It covers a lot, from the very beginning (i.e. how to set up an Evernote account) to fairly detailed power user features (i.e. search, tagging, location metadata). And it includes several use cases and even a chapter on how the author uses Evernote himself.

People complain it's expensive, but seriously, it's not that much. If it saves you just one or two hours of fiddling it has paid for itself.

I wrote a quick review with my thoughts.
Profile Image for Nola Tillman.
652 reviews50 followers
January 3, 2014
This is a helpful book if you're just getting started with Evernote. I've been using the app for about a year, and found a few things that will be of help, as well as some ideas for usage.

Some of the explanations were very basic, or about extremely obvious features (to create a new note, click 'new note.' now add the title). The author also seemed very amused by his own sense of humor - one more sentence about cumin waffles and I was ready to smack him. Then there was the secret agent chapter. /facepalm It seems like a chapter on planning and enjoying your vacation would have been more relevant.

Still, the author breaks down an app that many have described as 'intimidating' and provides insight into how to use it on a regular or even daily basis.

On a side note, message me through the site if you want a referral to Evernote, easily my most-used app (maybe second to moon reader+ - but a close second!) ;)
13 reviews
October 4, 2015
First, I should say that I find Evernote to be one of the most useful pieces of productivity software that I have ever used, and it is becoming central to the way I collect and file information and also plan and manage projects and tasks. I found this to be very well organized and thorough guide to using Evernote. Apparently, Evernote was so impressed by the book that they hired him to work for their company! It is great for beginner and intermediates. I consider myself to be an intermediate-advanced Evernote user and, while I breezed through many of the sections, I still learned a lot and found the book very worthwhile. While I found author's breezy, somewhat sassy style of writing interesting, although some might find it a bit off-putting. Mostly, I found that his writing style made the reading fun, and interesting. I will recommend this book, and a couple of others, to people who want to learn about Evernote.
75 reviews2 followers
March 7, 2016
Evernote Reader Guidebook

The title says "for New Evernote Users" and while I certainly wish that I read this book when I was a new user, I strongly urge seasoned users to read the book. It will provide new ideas for what to include (I love the idea of creating a rolling history of your children or for those at my stage, your grandchildren) as well as tips regarding the organization and ultimately searching for the filed info. A quick read and a book that I know I will refer back to regularly.

Maurice Rubino
Profile Image for James Marwood.
17 reviews4 followers
October 12, 2013
THE book on Evernote. I'd say this is a must buy for those new to the software, and useful for those with more experience.

It isn't hugely technical, but written in a very fun, accessible way. It may not include much of use to the power user, but is the book I always recommend to those new to Evernote.

The price is a little higher than the competition, but Brett regularly updates the book, you get this free of charge. A nice touch.
Profile Image for Beth Lind.
1,279 reviews43 followers
September 14, 2014
I love Evernote but I struggled to finish this book about Evernote. There were great tips and some shortcuts I learned so I do think it was worth the time. There is not a day that goes by that I don't use something or add something in Evernote. I love the program and personally think I should be their poster child on how to better your life by using Evernote.

By the way, I did appreciate the humor the author used. Sarcastic and dry and right up my alley.
Profile Image for Blaine Moore.
Author 9 books3 followers
August 17, 2014
This book provides an excellent overview of Evernote, and if you have no experience with it or have only used it casually this book can be a great resource. That said, there was very little "new" information for me personally having used Evernote for a while and having read a few tutorials from folks about how they use Evernote. You'll also need to be ready for a relatively repetitive attempt at humor throughout the book that grew old pretty quickly.
Profile Image for Brad Shockley.
17 reviews
February 19, 2015
less than what I expected but good

I'm not a big fan of Kelly's off the cuff writing style, but there was solid content in his book for the beginning Evernote user. I had been using it for a while, so I was a little disappointed in not coming away with more in depth, power user info. It just seemed like the software should be capable of so much more. But that could be Evernote's fault not his. I'd still recommend it to anyone starting out.
Profile Image for Hung Tran.
5 reviews
December 17, 2014
This book is very verbose and badly organized. Most of the concepts in this book have been known for years: tag, stack, note, notebooks.

All practical use cases which the author mentioned are not appropriate for everyone and too difficult to apply.

I gave it one star as I found a interesting plugin, Clearly.

Do not recommend this book to experienced Evernote users or those who working in software-related fields as there are nothing new.
Profile Image for Kitty.
889 reviews19 followers
April 10, 2015
Okay, so the author has a silly sense of humor, and probably everything in the book can be found somewhere on the Internet... but I enjoyed being able to read all about Evernote from a book, and I liked that it was explained in a fun way. I'm not sure I'll ever be a "power user" - or that simply reading this book would make that possible - but as I'm a newbie to Evernote, it was a great place to start. And it did make me eager to give Evernote a real try.
2 reviews
January 23, 2016
A must have

I've used Evernote off and on for years, mainly off. The reason I think was my lack of desire to learn something new. I knew Evernote was a neat wiz-bang tool but how to use it effectively? Now I know!

I cannot recommend this book enough. It's got the right mix of practical application of using Evernote with just the right amount of how-to to make it work. All presented in a way that even I get it!
Profile Image for Arjen Schwarz.
72 reviews1 follower
December 14, 2013
This book gives some good information about Evernote. I've been using the service for years, but I still got quite a few useful ideas out of this. Brett Kelly obviously knows what he's talking about (considering he got hired by Evernote after the first version of this book was released) and has a pretty clear writing style. Worth a read if you want to get more out of using Evernote.
Profile Image for David.
211 reviews9 followers
June 2, 2014
Good book, well written, informative, but I only gave it three stars because three stars is the maximum I feel I can give to a book like this. Sorry Brett. I put my review in Evernote (where else?) and shared it. Here is the link:

http://www.evernote.com/shard/s216/sh...
Profile Image for Andrew.
784 reviews13 followers
November 29, 2014
This book was a pretty quick read. I already knew most of the stuff that was covered, but there was enough useful new stuff that it was a worthwhile read for me. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to learn how to use Evernote more effectively. It's not terribly deep or technical, but it's not just fluff either.
Profile Image for Hom Sack.
554 reviews13 followers
January 19, 2015
I was actually satisfied with with using the outdated version of Evernote until it no longer works when I upgraded my computer. So, I was forced to use the latest version. Kelly's book was extremely helpful and clear about the new features and made me appreciate how useful they are. So, I have no regrets in being forced to make the change.
Profile Image for Luca.
63 reviews2 followers
August 21, 2015
I was and am using Evernote and was looking for a book to become more effective. I was also looking for hidden things and new ways of using the app. It is a good and comprehensive user guide. I definitely got a few good ideas on usage, and hands-on learning on more effective usage. I would definitely recommend it.
Profile Image for Lech.
60 reviews7 followers
May 6, 2012
This manual is concise, informative, and well-designed. I have been using Evernote for quite a while, so I wasn't satisfied with the tips & tricks, real-life examples. But overall it's a neat starting point.
Profile Image for Hunter.
93 reviews8 followers
September 3, 2013
Best book I've read for newbies on Evernote, but five times the price of others. If new to Evernote, I'd say buy this one before going to buy a group of the others, especially for the sense of humour.
16 reviews1 follower
August 6, 2014
Brett Kelly, is the guru for Evernote. He has updated this book several times and makes the update available to those owning a copy.

The book is outlined in a great way thus making it easy to reference later.
Profile Image for Leon Schmitz.
6 reviews2 followers
April 3, 2014
I read the 3rd edition and thought it was great. I have not seen a more concise Evernote book. This is highly recommended to anyone looking to learn the ropes in Evernote... And in an entertaining way. I'm starting the 4th edition now.
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