Bookshelf App Reviews

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The worst book app ever. I’ve used several ebook apps over the years and this is by far the worst. The annotation function is still in beta and it shows. Then this morning I woke up to an app update that removed my book and annotations. I then spent hours attempting to contact phone support but they could not hear on their end although other callers could hear me. They didn’t even try very long, just hung up after a few seconds. So bizarre. Finally I reached out to live chat to explain the problem and was told it was told the license expired and I had to click the link again from the Canvas portal. But I just started using the app and the book less than a week ago, so how could there be a licensing issue. The chat person was rude and not very understanding at all. I don’t know anything about this company but here’s some free advice for them: 1. Partner with an ebook vendor that actually knows what they’re doing and dump your developers. 2. Get a better phone system and train you agents to try a little harder before just hanging up. 3. Hire some live chat agents who have just a bit more empathy. Do yourself a favor and either use the physical book or a different ebook app because this one is truly terrible.

horrible experience do not recommend. being a college student with an ipad pro has made sereral aspects of learning more intuitive and enjoyable except when im forced to use this app because Murach only releases their e books through bookshelf. Rather than give you a pdf version of the book that can be imported into the native book app on the ipad i have to use this app which is severly lacking in features for it to be the only method for viewing the books that were purchased through murach. i find myslef trying to annotate but the terrible mark up feature is full of bugs and limiting to say the least. i understand that u guys dont want pirated books but making the experience all around horrible just to maintain control over a product with accounts and access limitis is ridiculios to be.. i paid over 100$ for books that i have a terrible experience interactinfg with through this app. After this semester i promise i will just buy the physical book to avoid having to use this app again.

No zoom feature. The app is ok at best but it doesn’t allow the usual iPad zoom feature in order to zoom into text or images. It has its own version of turning up font size, with an unfortunate effect of removing images from the page. I find the default text too small, so resort to skipping all images within the text, which can be confusing at times. The second inconvenient feature relates to highlighting. The app allows you to clunking highlight text, but don’t think about highlighting a hyperlinked word, because you will find yourself suddenly in the index! Also, there is no way to jot notes in the margins, a handy feature in many reading apps. I interact with texts in this way as I read and process, and this missing feature is significant to me as a learner. For these two reasons, I will not buy or rent another book that is only available in this format. The experience has been full of frustration.

New update is a no from me. I pay thousands of dollars for tuition, including my books from school. The old app was perfect and user friendly. When you open the app, you are greeted with all the books you have downloaded to your account. I had no issues At all. However, with the new update, when I open the app (on iPad and phone) I’m greeted with a screen that says “start building your library today”. I don’t need to start building a library because I’ve already started. However with the new update, I cannot access any of my books. All there is on the screen is a “what’s new” section and a “get help section” I’ve read through all of the help articles and nothing. I emailed support as well because this is absurd. I cannot turn in my assignments if I cannot access my books. I used the search tool and nothing. This is absolutely crazy. Why would you fix something that’s not broken? I have no access to my text books for any of my classes except through this broken app.

Buggy app. App has a lot of potential but also a lot of issues. Zero Pencil capability, which is pretty silly considering it’s an iPad reading app. Can’t even use the Pencil to highlight so I have to use my finger, which obviously covers the words. The app also freezes almost every time I try to highlight, and won’t work again until I force quit and reopen it. The “continuous scroll” layout doesn’t make much sense, particularly without any indication of page breaks other than the page number thrown into the middle of the text. And I’m not sure but I think the page number applies to the content below, not above, which is the opposite of what you would expect of the physical book.

Very Basic. This app is super basic. The highlighting feature is frustrating! Anytime i want to highlight a text next to a picture or on a narrow part of the page the it selects a bunch of other text i don’t want to highlight. The biggest frustration for me is not being able to write on the page. You can write notes but it’s not the same as being able to write anywhere on the page with my Apple Pencil and being able to see it at a glance. Other apps such as onedrive that was not design as a reading app has more functionality than bookshelf. Unfortunately i could not get this particular book as a PDF otherwise i would have used Onedrive instead. This app still has a long way to go.

AP Ways of the World History Textbook Review. This textbook not only has extremely interesting material, but it makes finding all of the key terms and facts extremely easy which saves so much time and effort. The AP Exam Tips on the side of every page are also extremely useful to study with and to help me prepare for the AP Exam. I also love the way the pages are organized and how the paragraphs are properly separated with not too much writing in between. The images and captions also better my understanding of the specific topic I am concentrating on, and I personally learn well from visual aids as well. This book also loads extremely quickly and I can easily access it on the go, when I am not home for instance. The information in this book additionally makes it fun to read and the text isn’t overly analyzed or boring either. I looking forward to using this book to assist in my academic studies as well as my AP exam.

Great website. This is a great bookshelf website. I like how the textbook has an audio feature where it will read to me. That is very helpful for me because I am visually impaired. However, when you get to the homework assignments, it doesn’t even let you write or even circle off an answer in a multiple-choice question in the book. Also, it would be nice if when you’re done, it can be quickly or at least automatically submitted to the professor. that’s the one thing that I don’t like. to do the homework assignments, I have to print them in paper form and then submit to the professor as a PDF when it’s done. It’s not very convenient.

Great app！Some important functions needed. Overall, I love this app! It’s very convenient, you can read book everywhere EVEN without internet. It will be even better for both educators and students if 1) it allows users to create customized folders to better organize the books 2) make it more compatible with notes taking and highlighting. For example, it will be fantastic if users can mark and make notes on the book using Apple Pencil or other tools. I am a colleague educator and will use it more if these functions are available! Thank you very much for developing this wonderful educational app! :)

annoying pop-up messages. every time i open the app, i am notified of a textbook that expired, even though that was weeks ago. i get it. it’s gone. how do i make this notification stop?!! it happens every time and it’s really getting on my nerves. otherwise i love the functionality. i love that i can convert almost any textbook into and audiobook so i can digest it better. definitely worth it for the value it gives. but please, give me the option to disable expired textbook notifications?! PLEASE??? it’s so, so irritating and the notification box just keeps happening each time i reopen the app.

Primitive. The use of highlighting and note taking is very primitive, as if they don’t want you to be able to do it; like the idea was an afterthought and was thrown in at the last minute. It’s not intuitive, is buggy, and after about 2 hours of trying to highlight and add notes, you are exhausted. I have an apple pen, and this app makes no use of that technology, but really, your finger isn’t much better either. I feel like they used basic technology from 15 years ago and your using a mouse instead of a precise touch screen (iPad Pro). I’m forced to use it because that is the only place I can get my textbook. I’m on page 200, and I’m ready to give up and pack around the 3” thick book with me. Developers: if you want to know how it should be to take notes, highlight, and mark up, take a look at GoodNotes4. They have it figured out. Hopefully you can figure this out, otherwise, I’ll got back to carrying giant textbooks around again. At least I can resell them...

Read On the Go!. I am not sure where all the other complaints are coming from but I have really enjoyed this app. This app is very convenient for people like me who are working and going to school at the same time. Having my books accessible to me is very helpful for a busy life. I am able to read and study anytime and anywhere. Of course I have had issues with the app, however, all of my issues were resolved by contacting app support. Thanks to Dana B. from VitalSource chat support, I was able to get access to my books and continue on with my day.

Extreme choppy slow scroll ruins the experience. Don’t bother skimming or flipping quickly through the content to find your highlights or anything useful… scrolling is slow and choppy, which is utterly amazing considering its a textbook viewing app. Seriously, every app I’ve ever used has scrolled more smoothly than this one and virtually none of those have been intended for doing reading. Aside from rendering the actual text on-screen, I can’t think of anything more important—and this app fails at it. Additionally, the Appendix A where answers to in-text questions are supposed to be is missing chapters 10-50. How does that even happen? With an utter lack of quality checking, care for the user experience, or incentive to actually produce a quality product I suspect. When universities are literally funelling every student to your doorstep and alternatives are scarce to nonexistent, it doesn’t leave much incentive to build something worthwhile, does it?

Crashes too much. I’m in nursing school for my BSN and I have to do a lot of reading. Majority of my books are on Elsevier or PrepU which they use bookshelf for the ebook. I listen to the audio since majority is difficult for me. The lady is monotone and can easily put you to sleep. On my Mac it’s a guy voice which is also monotone. The problem with the iPhone app are the fact that listening to the audio, when I highlight, it freezes and takes a long time to refresh. Highlights on the app is one color which makes it difficult to separate topics. Other times the app doesn’t even load my book and crashes. The main issue is the crashing because it interferes greatly with my reading or listening.

Mediocre. I use this app exclusively as a reference tool for large medical textbooks. The navigation is relatively intuitive, but there are a few issues that make the app challenging to use. For one, clicking on images typically creates a small “back”. On occasion, this button disappears and you have to navigate back to your location. Second, when opening the table of contents, it doesn’t show the submenu of where you are, it goes back to the top level contents. That is annoying when you are trying to quickly jump around a single chapter. Lastly, the app can be slow when loading pages of a book. It’s still faster than opening a textbook, but not by much. I still haven’t found a perfect solution, but I would still rather use this than carrying around 40 lbs of books.

Fail to highlight. I used the app on iPad Pro iOS 13. I have two textbooks, and the malfunction of highlighting showed up for both of them. I am not able to highlight all the words I selected when there is a font change within the text, and the highlight will only show between words. This happens most often when there is italic font mixed up with the regular. I’m half way through both of my books and this happens to me in every chapter. This is very annoying especially I rely on this function a lot. In one of my textbook, the search function did not work well either. I had to go to the website version to do the search, and it worked there.

Mediocre at best. This is 2022, and almost everyone in any type of schooling program is using some type of device to read books. This app should be geared towards more of a PDF mark up format. It should, at the very least, have a highlighter, pen and eraser. Click the highlighter and then any word or area in the book can be highlighted by tracing over it, unclick the highlighter to stop highlighting. Highlight/draw/erase with a pen (like Apple pen) and pan the page with your finger. The current highlighting format is so time consuming. Same with the pen, you should be able to make hand written notes in the margins or on the book pages. Alot of my books have small writing prompts in the chapters and I can not do them in this app. The notecards are a joke and I just use quizlet anyway. Looking into other apps for my college text books.

Back to school. It has been a really long time since I needed to study for anything. Accessing E technology for my textbook is great! I am using on my IPad with ease. Access anywhere and no heavy book to carry around or figure where you last left it. The only problem I’m having is controlling the highlighter function. The page moves really easy while I try to highlight and wants to move the entire screen/page. I don’t have a consistent technique yet to make that stop happening and is a tad frustrating. I have 800 pages to go so I suspect I’ll get better. An accidental swipe left or right takes you to the next chapter and once you go back it drops you back at the top of chapter and you have to try to remember where you were and scrolllllll to get back easier if you can recall a page number to enter and jump to that page (Any tips? For those 2 issues ) Creating flash cards is fantastic !! Quick access to study anytime. I’ll need to reference this book for life so I hope future access won’t be an issue. Crossing fingers as I sit for testing in May 😬

Perfect app with just one suggestion. The app overall is extremely useful especially when you do not want to have to carry any hard copy - heavy books. But since you choose to have all of your books in e version it is also nice to be able to use all “e-capacities”. In my case, I also use my apple pencil while using the app on my ipad, I love making notes using it. But unfortunately the app has no function to write in a book as you would in real hard copy. Especially difficult when the book has fill in questions for you to brainstorm and answer, I find it to be crucial for studying. This is very uncomfortable cause it just makes me take a screenshot, put it in the note app and write over a picture there. Would be great if you could pull something off to make this happen.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I got this app to read some of my textbooks on my iPad. I prefer to use the Kindle but some of my books aren’t available. Iced used this for 2 other classes and while not as functional as Kindle, it was fine. The new update caused the page to zoom in and out with the slightest touch. The highlighting is off too. Sometimes it highlights text in a different column. This is so annoying that I considering purchasing the book again to use on a different platform but I read the reviews and that platform has worse reviews than Bookshelf. Please fix this app ASAP before I chuck my iPad against the wall! Or worse, buy an actual book!

Excellent. The reading app is excellent. Layout is made with an effort to mirror the actual book as much as possible. Appreciate the fact that there is more that one color highlight, although there could be more than just two colors. Second thing that could be better is the frame for viewing tables. I would appreciate being able to zoom in and out with a finger pinch. And lastly, the « narrator» needs to sound much more like an actual human reading. As for now it is like a robot reading sequences of sentences. Nonetheless, scrolling down the text is easy and there is no hopping from page to page; it is rather a continuous thread when it comes to any particular chapter. And by only sliding left or right you are already in the next chapter. This keeps different chapters closer, and saves time. If improvement is made to based on the preceding fallouts, I think this is can become the leader in reading apps (I have already tried both Inkling and kindle).

Pretty good, but serious problems with “night mode”. As far as apps for textbooks go, this one is the best I’ve used; all the texts I have access too are formatted very nicely and the ability to change the font, font size, background color, etc is all great. I have one major issue with night mode however. On larger iPhones (I can only confirm for the 12 max), the “scrub bar” along the bottom that shows your place in the textbook stays white. Once it disappears, it leaves a blank white box in its place. Unfortunately, that really ruins the whole point of night mode and is really distracting. Plus, considering that one might be reading for hours it’s a serious burn-in risk for OLED devices; it is an unmoving, pure white rectangle on a contrasting dark gray background. As a result, that section will be getting magnitudes more “wear” than any other part of the screen Ideally, that bar would totally disappear when reading since it doesn’t even show the position once it’s not active. But, it could also be fixed by just making that bar the same dark gray as the app controls. Everything else is, so it seems like an oversight. It would also be nice if the contents, notebook, bookmarks, and flash card section were also night-mode friendly, but at least those aren’t screens you’d spend hours on like you would for the reading

DYSFUNCTIONAL APP. -STILL AFTER A YEAR!!!. Meaning: doesn’t function STILL!!! After refusing to access MY TEXTBOOK, that I paid additional money for - JUST for the digital version, because of ALLLLL the various issues with this app (both online and downloadable), I came back AFTER A YEAR-new classes-new semesters-JUST TO EXPERIENCE THE EXACT SAME ISSUES. *** “VITALSOURCE” - ARE YOU GUYS KIDDING ME!?!*** -STILL Sluggish. -STILL won’t highlight properly. -STILL exports micro small degraded export... I normally just bite my tongue if I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING GOOD TO SAY, but AFTER A WHOLE YEAR- REALLY!?! We (Students) pay hundreds of dollars for these digital versions-(because we have no other choice) - and then find out that THEY STILL DON’T (AFTER A YEAR) FUNCTION!!! I couldn’t believe it, I tried giving you the benefit of doubt. So, after working all night at the hospital I waited until I got home to see maybe if it was the hospitals internet-as if. But NO, ITS JUST THE SAME EXACT ISSUES THAT WERE THERE A YEAR AGO. I feel ripped off, but I see that I’m not the only one now as many others here have expressed THE EXACT SAME ISSUES. That, and having more than adequate time to address these issues, is why I feel compelled to not bite my tongue and let others know... -I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS APPLICATION.

Where are my books?. This app was great. It was also really convenient to be able to log in on the website from work to consult a couple books I have in my bookshelf. Well HAD in my bookshelf. They are now gone. 😩What happened to 2 of my books? Where are they? I noticed I couldn’t even find them to buy again or rent on VitalSource. Anyway, I bought them to have “forever” because they are very useful in my field of study. But they are no longer in my online bookshelf on the website. This is disappointing because I like to access these books from work without carrying around heavy textbooks. As a Gen X female, I already carry around a whole lotta baggage. I don’t want to carry huge books, too. I opened the app on my laptop and iPad (yeah, I know, 1st world problems) and do have the books opened up…but I’m afraid to close them out because I don’t want to lose them forever. If a book is no longer supported on VitalSource, and I paid a lot of money to OWN them (not rent), I should have been able to download them via PDF or some similar type of file. Or be paid back at least ½ of what I paid for them. Either way, I bought them and so I should be able to possess them…f-o-r-e-v-e-r. I hope it’s just that they are just gone on the website but stay on the app (pleeeease???).

Almost perfect. Over all the app is great. I have been able to down textbooks for school. And I can rent them at a lower cost rather than purchasing them outright. The app so far syncs pretty well between devices. However the major flaw I see with the app is you cannot highlight, or make notes. This is a basic feature and one of the primary reasons to download a digital book app on your phone or tablet. The company only gives the option to make notes (notecards) or highlight text on the website on a computer. The whole point in downloading the app on a tablet is so you don’t have to take your laptop with you everywhere. Being able to highlight text on your textbooks is a basic feature that one looks for in a digital book app. It was real let down when I found out I was unable to do so. Whether you are using an Apple Pencil or your finger you should be able to mark on the pages. Update, the developer reached out regarding the issue I had from my review. Gave instructions on how to address what I needed in the app. I appreciated the feed back on the help. Though done slightly differently than the website version. Indicated to press down on item needed to highlight and the option would come up. I attempted to do so and it has worked. I will continue to use this app.

Just use the website. The main benefit of this app is that it is more mobile than the website. However, this app is buggy and is missing some basic features that completely remove the mobile advantage. They force you to frequently type your email and password just to use the app (there is no way to stay logged in), and the “read aloud” function is terrible. The low quality of the voice on my device is understandable because they use your device’s built-in speech engine, but they don’t set up their books to be read correctly by speech engines. Many words on the page are broken into their individual letters, resulting in words being spelled out one letter at a time. All footnotes are announced for every page, so I hope you enjoy having your book interrupted about once a minute to hear about all the legal restrictions on how you can use the book. On top of that, some of the text is skipped and other text that wasn’t even there before is added in. Divisions between chapters are not clearly marked, leaving you confused about the context. Why would I ever decide to use this app when I can use the larger screen of one of many public computers that are increasingly available to everyone, or my laptop which is easy to bring anywhere?

Absolute Garbage. This app absolutely ruins the one great thing about ebooks: the ability to instantly search through them and find what you want. Oh sure you can search in this app but it’s just awful. For instance if you search for a two-worded phrase it will give you every single instance of both the words, which is less than helpful. There doesn’t appear to be any way to search for a phrase at all. The fact that this is geared toward text books and people who are going to need to search through the text on the regular is just ridiculous. The flash cards are a nice addition, though you’re severely limited in how you can format them. For whatever reason they only allow you one line to work with and you can’t space down to create a larger card. Everywhere throughout the app it claims you can hover over any diagram or sketch and add it to a flash card. I have yet to have that work. Then, say you messed up a flash card, editing them is a nightmare. I have 40 flash cards for one unit but when I hover over the one I want to edit I get nothing. No option to edit it. My option is to delete and start over. It’s a shame the publishers force people to use an app this bad for their product.

Does what it needs to do but not all that it could.. The app does what it needs to fairly well. I enjoy the integration with my school account so that I don’t need to go looking for textbooks. The UI is occasionally clunky to use but it’s overall good. The biggest change that I want to see is the ability to search on the page you’re currently on, all searches show results from the entire book when I usually want to just search the chapter or section where I’m at and I have to scroll through all of the results. I’d give a longer review but my hw is due in an hour, so good luck.

Why does this app have a high rating?. I’m being forced to pay thousands of dollars for digital textbooks that can only be viewed in this app and on the Vital Source website. Both are absolutely dreadful interfaces. They lack even basic Apple Pencil support, which makes annotating cumbersome and not even worth the time. I’m in med school, I simply don’t have time to waste half of my study time to try and use their laggy highlighting tool. I want to be able to write on the pages of the book like literally every other basic reading app allows. As if that’s not bad enough, I can’t even zoom in on my textbook. How on earth do you expect me to be able to see extremely complex, tiny, and detailed biochem and anatomy images? Do I also need to purchase a magnifying glass? I can’t believe my school is forcing us to read our books on this ridiculously outdated platform.

Easy to use, a simple and bare reading app. I use this app for some of my school textbooks. It’s very easy to use. Any questions and you can reach out for help from their customer service which I’ve had to do for one of my books. My one nit picky criticism is I wish they’d offer more viewing options especially regarding print size. You can only pick from four very varying sizes. Whereas say with the Kindle app, you can sort of pick the exact print size for your needs and likings. But this app happens to have a size that works pretty well for me so it’s not a big complaint.

UPDATED REVIEW. UPDATE: The developers reached out to me. They made the swipe feature to go between chapters a little more sticky so normal scrolling through the current chapter doesn’t bounce between chapters. It made a HUGE difference. I read 2 chapter (around 60 pages) and it didn’t happen one time. Kudos to their team for being so responsive. Thank you! 🥳🥳🥳 I love having this access to my textbooks, but the app is infuriating. There aren’t pages to turn like in a Kindle. The chapter eternally scrolls on. If you swipe left or right, it takes you between chapters. Slow scrolling while you’re reading has to be perfectly straight or BOOM you’re in the next chapter. I lose SO MUCH TIME finding where I was because the screen doesn’t lock onto what you’re reading. After a while, I inevitably swipe not perfectly straight and IT HAPPENS AGAIN! Put arrows to go between chapters and lock the scrolling feature.

Working. I use this app for one of my school textbooks and was very disappointed today when I went to open my book and I keep getting an error saying I need to update the app, but I already have the most up to date version for iOS. Please fix as my ability to complete assigned reading material and study for tests and quizzes is somewhat dependent on this app working correctly! It’s bad enough I had to open a ticket just to get my books to be available on the app. *edit* I tried pressing “update library” and that resolved the issue. I had been reading my book on a different device and apparently it does not automatically sync to the current spot. Some clarification on the verbiage for a future release or the ability to automatically sync between devices would be helpful, but otherwise I’m just glad it’s working 😊

Poor without internet. I love the concept of this app, the flash cards and highlighter work great… However, the fact that you can’t access any of the flowcharts or self checks that are offered in some of my college books without going to the online version is frustrating. And the online site that I have to use for the books I have tries to force my iPad into opening the app. Literally every time I turn a page on the online version it tries to redirect me to the app and it’s extremely frustrating and overall a poor collaboration between the two platforms. This is something that should be addressed. We should be able to completely download the book onto a e-reader device and then still be able to use it, not only have access to certain parts of it without internet… makes me want to go back to 20 lbs of textbooks, at least I can answer the questions in those books and then check the back to make sure I got the answers right…

Not formatted for easy reading.. It’s great having access to the materials you use for a Vital Smarts class after the fact, much more handy than the paper book would be. However, at least for the book I’ve used it for (so far just Getting Things Done), the text isn’t laid out for easy reading. There is far too much per page and the lines are far too long. It’s like they took the letter sized word doc of the book manuscript and imported it rather than formatting it like a real book. This really slows down the use of the content and makes it far too easy to get lost. It’s a little better on the iPhone than the iPad, but there is still far too much content per “page.” The other functionality of the app is good, but doesn’t make up for it.

It’s great but it could be so much better!!. I love the value of this app. It is great to have your books available digitally and be able to have them read to you. Studying has never been easier. HOWEVER! There is nothing more aggregating than to have the citations read to you when using the read out load feature especially if there are more than 1 cite for the information. It is so easy to loose the train of thought or concept of the text to have to mull through the citations. There should be programming to skip over these linked sources. If there is a way to remove the reading of the citations in the settings I have yet to figure it out and I’ve been using it for years. Please to better and make this possible. I for one do go back to the digital text and will read some of the sources (sometimes) but for read a loud, it is not helpful whatsoever!

Great when it works, awful when it doesn’t. Most books that I’ve used have been great. The app displays them like a pdf, and is quick and responsive. When I can use this instead of carrying a pile of two-inch thick textbooks around, I am happy. However, books in epub format look awful, like 90’s era HTML. There’s no way to control what shows up in your library in the app: you can only add books through the website, and if you’re done with a book, you can remove the download from the app but it will still show the cover in the library. A few days ago I added a book to my library through the website, and while it shows up in my browser, it won’t appear in the app. Signing out and in doesn’t help, nor does clicking “Update Library”. So, I’m back to lugging around print books for now.

New Update…. This app was incredibly useful—minus the randomly resetting my progress on a page when I tapped the left end of the screen—until the most recent big update. Why do I now have to scroll all the way down to get to the next chapter? Am I meant to just guess which page that chapter begins on? Extremely frustrating and disappointing, this app was nearly perfect until this unnecessary change. Please return it to how it was, it seriously makes no sense to me that I have to scroll to the bottom of a chapter (and lose where I was in that chapter) to get to the next one. Often the previous/next chapter has a list or definitions which I need to constantly switch between chapters to compare with, now I spend ten times as long doing the exact thing. The new changes have made the app inefficient, less helpful, frustrating, and confusing—because I seriously have no clue why it was released in the first place. Thank you for the otherwise/previously amazing app.

Please fix adding figures to flash cards.. Very good app that has helped me in my studies first in college and now in pursuing my home inspector license. Vitalsource is especially useful when used in conjunction with their desktop application. My only complaints currently are that within the last month, I have no longer been able to long press on figures to add them to flash cards as I used to be able to. Additionally, I can add figures to flash cards via the desktop app but they will not sync with the mobile app. This is very frustrating and I hope it gets addressed soon.

Good enough, but needs more fundamental features. I am using this app only because the books you buy from VitalSource are encrypted and can only be read from this app. The app shows books with a small font and almost no formatting at all (no identation, no spacing). You need to make do with the few formatting options they provide to make it easier to look at. I also wish you could flip pages from the sides instead from the top and bottom, since it takes up text space. The app also locks you from reading if you install it on an old device, and it becomes inconvenient when you have an old iPad used mainly as an eBook reader, and can't keep all your books on the same place. The app does have some good aspects, the reading feature keeps me focused on the text more than if I read it by myself, and there are a few study features (notes, highlighting, bookmarks and flashcards, citations) and they are useful to study.

What a crap app. This app is not easy to use, it will not let you print from the app, making you use the desktop version, and even then it just prints the url to file you want to print, not actually the information you want to print. Accessing the desktop version is cumbersome, and I am so tired of having to verify my cookies settings every time I turn around on the site. The version of the app or desktop version I open on my phone is different than the one I can open on my tablet or desktop, and does not have all of the features, such as print. In short, I would never recommend this app or website to anyone, and I feel bad for anyone who is forced to use it because their institute of higher learning offers their textbooks through it. A high school student with no funding could build a better app and website.

Copyright Info on Bottom of Each Page. So I already purchased a physical copy, used, off of eBay (the way you should always do, viaLibri is even better). I paid the $35 for this electronic version solely for the ability to listen to the book. I can do that, it’s fine, the voices are getting better with “enhanced” option. So here’s my issue, and perhaps I am missing something, which if that’s the case I’ll never know: there is copyright info on the bottom of each “page” and THAT gets read as well, every single time. I can skip it when it gets there but it doesn’t allow me the opportunity to be free and just meditatively listen. It creates a lot of CHOP and should be remedied. Am I typing to a anybody, perhaps a 20 year old intern? “Help! I need somebody.” The Beatles.

High praises and a suggestion. To start I thoroughly enjoy this app for reading my textbooks for college. The menus are simple and effective, staying out of the way so I can get my reading done without hassle. I enjoy the bookmark system, though I am still figuring some features out—such as how to remove an old bookmark. If I was going to ask for one thing, it would be that some variation of a night-mode be added in the future. I don’t feel I’m alone in preferring a darker background with light text to read, especially in dark areas. Other than that, I see no problems. To date, I haven’t had a bug or a crash. Great app!

Just keeps on getting better!. Today’s update, 20 December 2018, was a giant step forward in that the user is now able to search across all books on the bookshelf. A global search is executed from the new home page layout and presents the user with a list of books (scrolled across the top of the page) where the search term was found. Clicking on a specific title will display all the hits found in that title. Clicking on a link from a selected title will take the user to the text within the book where the search term is located. When the Home icon is clicked, the user is returned to the global search to explore the other hits that match the search term. Another new feature is the carousel-like display (reminiscent of the first Kindle Fire display) of the most recently read titles. Congratulations to the development team for these latest enhancements. They added real value to the app and greatly enhance the user’s access to content. It would be great if, eventually, the Apple Pencil or other styluses could be used to write or draw on the pages of ebooks—which would be most useful for academic purposes.

This app is crap.. I use this bookshelf website because my online school uses it and that’s the only way I can view the books they make me use. It’s horrendous using the website to read, ESPECIALLY on an iPad. So, I download this app onto my iPad recently and the upside is that all my books are in one place and I can search a word and will pull up the pages with the keywords. Unfortunately, the organization within the search is horrendous. Today the app alerted me that I need to update it in order to open my textbook. Now if the sole premise of this app is to READ OFFLINE, why would they be blocking people from opening a book because their app needs updating? Very likely that person could be offline and could not update the app, rendering their book useless. I update it, come back and TRY opening it again, still saying I can’t open my textbook because it needs updating. Fix this app!!! Y’all have students using it!

Good but needs improvement. I love the fact of being able to use this app on my iPad and phone which allows for easy access to the book no matter where I am. It does need some improvements with the highlighting option. It doesn’t allow you to select all and delete all of the highlights. So each one has to be deleted one at a time.. I highlight a lot and like to delete them after reading the chapter so this is a little frustrating. I also have a lot of issues with not being able to highlight at times and not be able to access the bottom tool bar to select a chapter, the bookmark tab, etc. If those improvements were made then it would be great!

Misses the Mark. The pharmacology book I bought is in ePub format, so I don’t see why I couldn’t just download it on iBooks to begin with. I would assume they’re pretty good about not allowing users to share books. I can’t think of another reason you’d force users into a proprietary app that is free. Reading the reviews, it looks as though the developers do update this app because I saw an option for night mode which someone had wanted. Here’s what I’d like: 1. Better highlighting, especially with Apple Pencil. This hold and drag business is ridiculous 2. Changed chapter/page format. Each chapter being a page, I can see where that would sound convenient in a meeting but if your chapter is 30+ pages long it’s rather inconvenient to keep scrolling. That’s all so far. Thanks! Oh last thing-people are on here rating 5 stars because you can read the book offline with the app-you bought this book. You should be able to view it anywhere, just as you would a physical book. That’s not an amazing feature, that’s basic ebooks. I hope my concerns are addressed but either way I appreciate fewer natural resources being used to make a textbook that I have to have anyway.

Not a good app, but it has potential with changes. This is not a functional app, especially for educational purposes. First of all, many of the services provided by the desktop app are not available through the mobile version. It is somewhat understandable for some of the more complex features offered in other apps, such as Microsoft Office, but in a reading app I feel that there is no excuse. For one thing, in the desktop version it will use a primitive text-to-speech (TTS) program to enable you to listen while working on something else. This would be much better applied to a mobile version, or does that make too much sense? There are other issues that prevent the mobile version from being a success, but all of them, including the TTS should be an easy fix with an update. Overall, a very frustrating app that could be great with just a little tweaking.

Won't let me flip pages: UPDATE. I'm really frustrated with how it's not letting me flip pages. What's the point of this app if I can't even use it to read? Not to mention prior to not being able to flip pages, when you could flip pages, it would take around 5 seconds to load, where my kindle app was instantaneous with no lag between pages. Updated review: looks like they did an update to fix the issues regarding not being able to flip pages and highlighting. There is still a bit of lag between flipping pages, but at least I can flip the pages. I appreciate the developer responding to my review and making sure the issue was resolved.

A college students best-friend. As a college student I would find myself going to the campus book store and shelling out $150-$300 for a single textbook. Then one day I noticed that one of the books I was going to buy was digital through this app. I was using an iPad Pro with Apple Pencil to take notes so I figured maybe I should give it a shot. The physical book was $170 the the digital being $60. I have been in love with it ever since. Some teachers, usually the older ones, are not always happy that an electronic device is being used to replace a notebook pen and textbook, but I remind them that it is not a privilege that I am here, I pay a hell of a lot of money to be in the classroom and I will study and learn the best way for me. It is worth it, and will save you lots of money!!

Lacking refinement. The biggest gripe I have is that certain sections of the book appear to be pictures instead of accessible text. It’s as if all they did was scan the book and stitch the pictures together in an app. When you attempt to highlight text in these “picture“ sections, it doesn’t let you highlight. Instead, the app acts as if you’re trying to pick up a picture and move it somewhere else. The only thing I’m actually able to highlight is section titles and some information in the section reviews. All of the content within the chapter is a series of pictures I can’t do anything with. Don’t get me wrong I’m satisfied with the fact that I’m able to get all of this information for cheap compared to purchasing the full book, but if they are advertising certain capabilities in this application they should be usable throughout the entire book. For me to give four stars, the entire book would need to be in a unified format of accessible text. For me to get five stars, the book would have to be more interactive than simply QR codes and a few videos.

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I regret buying my e-textbooks due to this app. Highlighting is absolutely horrible. It’s 2020 and there still isn’t apple pen or any stylus integration for this app. How is that possible? I could have just purchased the physical textbooks and get some use out of those. This app literally ruins the purpose of having a e-textbook. The search function isn’t very friendly either. Seriously, just get the physical version if it’s possible and do not waste your time with any e-books on this app.

Locked down encryption can’t access money spent on text. Bought economics text book on app years ago, can’t recover account, forgotten economics textbooks name, when leaving contact screen automatically deletes information as searching for book title. When asking to send to my address my address data must have been deleted. The customer service here is bad I will right further reviews online as book cost me well over $100. Locked down system to much encryption or deleted data that should be kept. In end very disappointing and I won’t be trusting vital source again.

Flat battery in hours and repetitive logins!. Unfortunately I have no choice but to to use Pearson textbooks but on loading one today, I had not ‘unloaded app’ just closed the iPad. On return, my battery is drained and when charged iPad Reports 88%of battery usage is this App! If I leave it any time at all I have to log back into the App...way too often.

Sluggish, hard to navigate. The latest update has made highlighting text a nightmare. The navigation is not intuitive at all - going back and forth from the home screen. I only use this for ONE university text book and I hate to think of what it would be like to have all of my texts on this platform

Could be perfect with some tweaks. This app would be perfect if the colour of the highlighter could be changed more easily (as of now you have to go to “add note” to change it). Also, it would so useful to students if you guys can add in the ability to underline (also in different colours )

Ok but not the best.. Vital Source offers a reasonable app to view electronic books on iPad. It is however limiting with lack of Apple Pencil support, limited highlighter colours and the ability to make narrations natively on a page as you would on a physical book with a pen. If these shortcomings were addressed, offering a similar experience as other PDF Markup type apps, Vital Source would be an excellent offering to students wanting to embrace digital, paperless method of study.

Highlights needed. This app is useful. However it dose not allow the use of highlighting on the app. This feature is very important to me while studying my material and I would very much appreciate having this option available on the app.

Faulty pages. Generally good however some pages are appearing blank. Also, pages that were there between reads, may appear blank for the next read. This is not acceptable for university texts.

Swiping & scrolling. Whoever suggested swiping between chapters and scrolling through pages deserves a pay rise. This app was hard to navigate the way through a book before but now it's a pleasure, dare I say, joy! Reading texts for uni is so much easier. Thank you👍🏾

Bugs and crippling functionality problems. Many bugs and functionality issues with this one – so I recommend that you don’t buy eTextbooks if they require this app to read. The speech function does not recognise my iPad speech preferences. It only reads in the same voice which I have trouble understanding, and not the voice I have chosen in the Accessibility options in the Settings on my iPad. Also, I couldn’t even provide this feedback through the app’s feedback function as it doesn’t let me submit it. Up your game folks – you can’t have customers paying hundreds of dollars for electronic textbooks to have to use this hideous platform. The lack of highlighting and annotating options is crippling to study, and like other reviewers, I think the Apple Pencil should be much more useable with this. I’m using the iPad app on an iPad 6th Gen with the latest iOS version.

Daylight Robbery.. ‘How do you legally get users to part with their money in exchange for something you’d otherwise flush down the toilet or make fertiliser with?’ Thought Mr. Corporate. ‘Aaha! I shall create the practically useless Vitalsource app and get textbook providers to lock their products with this app’. ‘Then I’ll make revolutionary changes such as pages that can be swiped to turn (which other reader apps have had since the beginning of time) and of course work really hard to stop people from trying to convert the ebooks to anything else that they can actually DO something with rather than try and understand why people are trying to convert it in the first place. Come to think of it...ingenious plan for turning students into suicidal/homicidal beings - Put a textbook they need on an island surrounded by a moat filled with giant crocodiles (or the vitalsource app. Same-same). TLDR - It’s a crappy app. Note to this app makers: take a peek at how apps like notability works. It’s doesn’t have to be a fancy note-taking app but if you have an ebook that you can’t highlight/ annotate on, then it beats the freaking purpose of having an ebook!

Good but not great. On the whole, I like using Bookshelf for my studies. However it has flaws and is frustratingly clunky and slow on Apple products. Highlighting text sounds like it has been an issue for some time and, as of this morning, it is still an issue. I would prefer the text to be available on Apple Books. Maybe Apple could look in to developing a ‘scholar’ version of books for students? Bookshelf is frustrating when efficient reading for study is essential.

Lacks Apple Pencil integration. Bookshelf ha a very clean layout, and swiping through pages are buttery smooth on the iPad Pro. Although I hope that Apple Pencil integration is added soon, such as: using the pencil to quickly highlight text instead of requiring to hold and then drag with your finger, when this could easily be done by just dragging the pencil. Overall, I hope this is added soon as I believe this is a vital missing feature.

It’s okay. The bookshelf app works like any other e-reader apps, if there was another option to access my required textbook other than through the VitalSource app I would choose the other option. Flash cards are not available in the app, highlighting is a pain, and there’s no way to make handwritten annotations. Please make a way that handwritten notes can be made, it’s really helpful for students especially for visual learners.

New UI is a downgrade. The previous UI was perfect. Why did you take out all the options to change the text size? The screen doesn’t adjust when you change rotation. Looks more clunky. Huge downgrade in terms of usage.

Thankful there is an app, wish it was good. The app does everything you’d hope it would, it just does a sloppy job. Lags, pixelated and slow to turn pages -on the fastest iOS device out there, iPad Pro v2. A review to how the product has been written is required.

Please fix asap. Recent update has made this app so laggy and quite frustrating to use. All my highlights disappear too. I was actually quite fond of it, found it super convenient and easy to use when I first downloaded it earlier this year. But now it’s just annoying, please fix ASAP

Does what it says, but has problems.. Like the title says. It does what it says, but for whatever reason it is laggy. I mean super laggy. I mean you cant change chapters easily or even scroll consistently even with the file fully downloaded. I use this program because I’m required to by my university. No other reason.

Lacks features. The application is not as versatile or user friendly as apps like iBooks or kindle. The voice function reads all the details on the page like the page number and references showing it clearly hasn’t been optimised. It is so convoluted and confusing to use. You can’t change the settings for inverting the colours to ease burden on your eyes. I only use the app because it has a monopoly on the electronic versions of my uni text books.

Ability to download more pages. The restriction on the application to download more that a couple of pages is annoying and restrictive. At the very minimum the number of pages able to be downloaded needs to increase.

Useless app for students. Lacks functionality that is required for students to effectively use for study. Don’t waste your time buying a textbook that is locked into this useless app. I can’t highlight text in the paragraphs, when selected it highlights the text in the header and footer and there is no workaround. There is no way to write on the pages either. I bought the digital copy of the textbook as I prefer to study this way. Now I wish I had purchased a hard copy instead.

Where’s the intuitive functionality?. It’s fine for straight plain reading books, but as a student, we have to do so much more than just read books. Highlighting is annoying and clunky - please include Apple Pencil capability so we can change pages with our finger and quickly use the pencil to highlight. Writing extra notes is annoying, and after paying for a digital copy of a book, we should be able to write on the book as if it was a PDF. This app has so much potential to be my go to for textbook, but until it starts to be more intuitive to use as a student, I would honestly rather continue spending half my day looking for a lower quality, old editioned online copy of my textbook than paying $50+ for a book that I have to use this clunky system to read.

Horrible app. Next to useless app. Only reason I use it is because all of the textbooks I need are locked into using this app. There is hardly any functionality built in. There will one day be an uprising of students that are sick to death of putting up with overpriced physical textbooks and useless eTextbook apps that they will take over the world. I can’t wait for that day. Also the vitalsource support is prompt to reply but just dismiss any issue you are actually having. They just blame it on Apple, yet I don’t have these issues with any other apps on my iPad...

Awful. Just buy the textbook as this is useless. The text I was trying to read was essentially unreadable on a mobile device as it’s the same as a massive PDF file which you have to scroll across the page to read the sentence. Just go and buy the textbook.

Book shelf. The problem with bookshelf is that’s it’s very glitchy and it drops out a lot and sometimes the books don’t even open please fix this

Functional and easy to use. The app meets pretty much all I need e.g., making a note, easy to turn page and locate chapters. 100% happy with it.

Don’t use for reference books. This app is just acceptable if you are reading the book from cover to cover, but is excruciatingly slow is you are trying to move around quickly as you need to with manuals or reference works.

Just okay. Needs improvement as well as competition.. A shame so many students are forced into using this app since it’s the only way to access some online textbooks. I suppose that might be part of the reason why there’s little incentive to improve the app. Incredibly basic functions. Often times buggy where, when using with an iPad, the UI just disappears altogether and you can’t access any of the toolbars - just endless scroll of the textbook. I have to close it out and reopen it again to restore the UI. Highlighting is buggy. Otherwise I think this app is okay, but honestly I would prefer to use Apple Books if I wasn’t locked into using this specific app due to the textbook format. Tad ridiculous.

Comparing with pdf-notes ipad app. Try using pdf-notes ipad app, then you will understand that vitalsource bookshelf does not come close to what pdf-notes offer. Pdf-notes has: 1. Far better text highliting abilities. 2. Far better notes creating abilities (notes can be two types i.e in a closable note and it can be always visible onpage note) 3. Freehand using which u can draw anyting using ur finger on the pdf book itself which the app will save it in the book. 4. U can attach any number of images anywhere in the pdf book on any page which the app will save it in the book Arif

Table of content. Table of content is not as easy as to work with as it used to be The drop down menu of the Table of content does not work properly and it freezes the whole application

Clumsy app. Annoyingly this app can now only be used on one mobile device at a time whereas I used to be able to use it on both my phone and pad. A bit disappointed but while it’s still free makes it tolerable.

Doesn’t work. Can’t get it to work at all. Tried to search for books to add to my shelf and keep getting the message “Nothing here! Try a different search term or check your spelling.” No matter what I search for. Deleting this pointless app. Also, the security questions are too long, the only one you can read is “What is your favourite sport?”

Great Savings and Easy Access. Excellent access to a variety of books for my studies over the years with great savings. I can also take my books anywhere.

Just lacks useful functionality.. I get it that companies want to protect their rights and their products. But this whole format just is ridiculous - what they’ve done to protect their own rights comes entirely at the expense of the user’s rights to use their book. A few examples: 1) You can’t label the book marks you create, so you just end up with the date/time and chapter heading in a long list. Not useful! 2) Highlighting is a HORRIBLE experience, even with the Apple Pencil. You have to select your text, which is a jerky process, and then the menu crops up right as you want to adjust the selection, so you have to start over. And the limited highlighting colours are pre-defined such as “define” and “exam.” No, thank you. I’ll colour in what ever colour I darn well want! 3) There is no ability to handwrite notes on your pages. You can type in a note here or there, but that’s not helpful if you’re a visual person who responds to seeing the notes actually in your own writing on the page. Seriously guys, if you’re going to lock us in so hideously, could you at least do us the courtesy of locking us into an app that is useful to students, not just executives rubbing their hands at how smart they’ve been in locking it all down?

Does not function well. Love this app on my MacBook however when I use it on my new iPad Pro not a good experience at all. Turning the pages is a nightmare are there is some sort of lag.

Poor User-friendliness and bugs. Trying to get between the purchasing of my textbook through Wiley and the downloading of it onto this app was a process that should’ve taken 2 minutes and instead took close to an hour. I think I had to make three different accounts on various websites and try to navigate severely unintuitive websites - vital-source’s included - just to get the book in the right place. Then, I can even use half the interactive parts, because their drag and drop function doesn’t work without the app trying to turn the book’s page. The whole process and also the eventual product is poor quality, low effort and almost feels like it’s designed to turn you away.

Not very usefull. As a student, highlighting important things is the single most useful study tool, and frankly the highlighting function in this app is not good enough. I would strongly recommend making the app apple-pencil compatible, allowing for easy scrolling with the finger and more precise and efficient highlighting with the pen. The current way of highlighting with the finger only is inconvenient and slows down the reading process significantly. I enjoy the text customisation options and recently added continuous scrolling, however would still deem this app largely useless purely due to its lack of convenient highlighting, a major aspect of every student’s studying habits.

Fix the bugs. Whatever you did in the last update, my one and only book that I have in this app shuts down as it is trying to open. I paid hundreds of dollars for the book and now can’t use the e-version. Very disappointed in Elsevier and Bookshelf.

Bookshelf app. Very easy to install & use also very stable and fast loading!

Terrible. The app constantly freezes. Searching and scrolling is slow and buggy. This and the desktop client are awful. There is no excuse for such a poor quality service in 2022. Makes studying so much more of a hassle and unnecessarily adds to the stress of being a tertiary student

Fix it now. For the amount of money people pay to use these textbooks online, the app should be of a higher quality.

Listen to audio. Does a pretty good job, only problem is that the sequence is often not correct, This occurs as the publisher sets the text etc. in blocks and the audio follows these . The software is not intelligent enough to know how to read the page like a human under these conditions. It would be good if apps amd publishers could work to improve this. Overall, still pretty good

Just fantastic. I love this application! I buy all my textbooks through bookshelf, it’s so easy to use and works seamlessly on the internet, iPhone or iPad.

Supporting Education. As someone whom struggles with reading. it is a blessing to be able to try and read anytime anyplace. It’s wonderful to be able to keep this textbook highlighted as a reference guide in years to come. Being e-book saves on space on selves, cluttering on desks It’s cheaper to purchase a E-book than a paperback book.

Easy learning. I used to end the day with sore shoulders from carrying a large textbook laden book bag. All day long, my upper body was bent forward reading or taking notes. Since I started using textbooks, all I carry is my laptop or iPad. Best of all, I can read in comfortable positions. Easy learning, E-textbooks!

Figures need to be handled better. (I’m going to try my best not to berate or swear) Basically, developers please allow an enlarging option on figures. For example, if you click/tap on an image you can have an interactive zoom or whatnot. I would like this implemented because the majority of images in Campbell Biology 11th edition are very descriptive. There’s also an image that is actually a landscape page full of information and paragraphs which I can barely read as the text is so small. This was the image that prompted me to write a review. I am using a lap top if that helps. Thanks for your time

New edition dilemma solved. Okay so I'm not one for reading from a pad that doesn't have pages I can turn physically; however, recently I was backed into a corner of no escape. Choices? Download the new edition now, wait until December for the physical copy to arrive, or fail the subject. As I travel constantly, I have the book on hand always, it is significantly lighter and I have saved on storage space and bought a new pair of shoes with the price savings. A win win for all.

Tyler review about the app. This is good for school because we can look on our iPads and read what we need to do

Great in general, few bugs. I really like VitalSource as they usually offer lifetime access to ebooks for texts where publishers may have an expiration date. So far, I found all my textbooks here; it's convenient having everything in one app. Email support is also quite quick. Highlighting could be improved, as the "height" of the highlight is not consistent. The "define" option appears to be not working as it should. Personally, I think the "view all titles" page should be the home screen. Overall, it is pretty convenient to use on the iPad.

Monopolies. What can you do?. This app looks like it would be ok if only you could actually read the book. With the four text books I have for my course, it is virtually impossible to read the parts of the pages that are hidden by the very large page selection scroller. Of course you can read the hundreds of different copyright warnings. (1-3 of them on every single page). Just another example of a company more interested in protecting their ‘rights’ than creating something useful. Don’t pay ridiculous amounts for your books. Get a hard copy. At least they are readable.

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Erased my notes. What the rest said is true. Apple pen works randomly ( least often when you have deadlines) and notes/ highlighting is randomly erased, apparently especially when studying for exams. Can’t overstate how frustrated I am

Great, but.... The iPhone and iPad apps are great. However, the MacBook Pro M1 app is unstable and regularly crashes when making flashcards. Hopefully this will be resolved soon because it really slowed down my studying process. Also, would love a dark mode when using the workbook as a start. Otherwise, this is a fantastic product.

Works great for my college eTextBooks. Thankfully my tablet runs this app perfectly, it’s my only option for the moment until my monitor is fixed 😄 Super smooth, able to zoom right in + with pairing my magic keyboard & mouse I am able to use the app perfectly. Tap to the right to go to the next page & continue reading 5 stars ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Excellent portable library. Excellent app

3 stars. Everything is fine, except the absurd auto reading function pissing me off all the time

Confusing & not intuitive. Interface is confusing and not intuitive. These ebooks should be published for use with the more commonly used and proven ebook readers (e.g. Kindle) that have been more suitably designed for the purpose.

Good app. I’ve been using this app for a long time but I suggest a zoom or magnifying feature using our fingers. It’s hard to see writings on tables (that can’t be increased even when enlarging the font) especially since I like reading through my phone.

Flash cards don’t sync consistently between devices. The app seems reliable overall but flash cards don’t sync reliably between devices. This is problematic for students who use multiple devices. The ones created on iPad transferred to iPhone but the iPhone created ones won’t transfer even after closing and resetting both apps. Hoping it fixes itself over the next few days.

Book is good. And highliting tools are garbage

Buggy and Seems to be Draining Battery a Ton. Using my iPad mini 6, this app seems to be pulling 1% battery per minute. It’s typically a high drain app but recently it has just been a total battery sucker. It’s not an issue with the battery because other apps still drain the normal amount they have. Also the app has gotten buggier with Pencil lately and less and less textbooks have good functionality on the app. Update: literally drained my battery from 47% to 12% in less than 20 minutes. This app is brutal.

Great App!. I use it for my school text books, the note function comes in really handy since it helps to make it easy to study for tests/exams. Honestly I think this reader is better than kindle. Great Job, Vitalsource team.

Unexpectedly great app. I was worry about finding the books at the public library or book store and after search everywhere, I discovered this app is provided by the CPA for free texts consultation, amazing and great app, now I can read books in my iPad and iPhone at any time.

It wont let me sign in. I tried to sign in but it didn’t work. It only works for computer.

This app sucks! I hate it. The highlight and comments on this app are terrible. While it appears that it has been designed for use on a tablet or phone, on some pages the highlight function refuses to work, for reasons unclear.it would be nice if you could use the apple pencil on this app for highlighting, writing handwritten notes in the margins, etc. Future updates should aim to be more like Adobe PDF viewer. This app makes it painful to make quick notes

Cant fit screen ? Really ?. An ebook reader than cant't even display pages correctly if you scroll. Scroll to yhe next page and your page will... slide off the screen to the left... or the right. Do we need to pay more so your reader knows how to hold a page centered? You'd think that basics like this would be made to work. Not here. Hard to believe i know. Oh but it will read out your textbooks which must be a much more important feature than being able to read it right ?

Cannot use with Apple Pencil. This app needs to integrate Apple Pencil. It has the potential to be a great resource but students who use apple pencil it is garbage.

Battery drain. Can’t even use it for one hour, it drains battery so fast on both iPad and iPhone. Useless App!

Not ideal. It’s difficult to navigate, sometimes it plays two books at once. Just don’t expect it to work. It’s a struggle to learn this way, for sure.

Great. Great app, not bad value. I would improve the highlighting feature to support the Apple Pencil. as well as add the ability to write a note on textbooks with the Apple Pencil

Bug fix please. Your search tab doesn’t want to work properly on my iPhone nothing will appear after searching regardless of the book or author the search tab keeps saying nothing found it’s as if I were off the internet well trying to use the search bar.

Garbage. Why even have a ebook app if you can’t annotate it, honestly it’s pretty trash and I’m highly disappointed, could not have been worse

"fit width" to screen taken away ? why ? why ?. why in the world would an app designer fail to understand the need for a book to fit the screen width in an ipad or iphone ? even if you need a little gap at the sides to support the side tabs like TOC and Notes, we can accept. But instead the app took this essential feature right out. now, as you scroll through the book in Fixed format (PDF like), the page will veer right off to the left or right and you continously have to keep bringing the page back to center and fit within the screen size. this is an ebook reader ? are any of the book publishers reading these reviews ?

Difficult to work with. Glitchy and unresponsive app. For example - it flips page when trying to select for highlighting, and sometimes refuses to flip page when swiped. It does allow to read, but working with book is a pain ( doing markings, highlights etc). I don’t think it is a successful reinvention of the wheel ( eBook app)

Doesn’t work. Doesn’t work. Can’t find textbook, freezes, glitchy. Basically everything that you would worry about going wrong happens.

Okay, but not worth the hassle. This app has great features, just way too buggy and overly sensitive on touch controls. My app constantly closes the program (exists me out), highlighting stops working so I have to restart the app, if I accidentally touch wrong part of the screen it takes me back to the very first page of the textbook or jumps 10 pages., the list goes on. Has potential, just needs a lot of bug fixes! I personally do not recommend the app as it is right now. (December 2022)

Not loving this. Can’t get the highlight function to work using an iPad Pro and pencil. Also the spoken word reads everything including the the title numbers , eg chapter 1, 1a 1b is read out loud . I know it’s chapter 1, I don’t need every sub section title read out loud, especially when it doesn’t do it in logical order. Ugh, if only I could download a pdf and then use the pdf on my regular apps. I’m actually thinking of returning the book ( which has great content) because the app isn’t that great.

Bookshelf. La recherche dans bookshelf devrait tenir compte de l’importance des informations cherchées (par exemple: priorité au gros titres, puis aux sous-titres, puis au texte lui-même) au moins dans l’affichage des éléments de la recherche.

Note making. It would be more convenient to incorporate the use of apple pencil to make notes.

It’s okay but has room for improvement. They should add dark mode and improve taking note feature.

Book shows up fine. Highlighting is suppppper slow. Need to fix the highlighting function for those with iPads/apple pencils. Would be a lot more efficient if you could just swipe over the text and it highlights it instead of holding it down dragging it then clicking highlight

Way to ruin a good book--has less functionality than a pdf. Terrible app. Without ipencil annotation capabilities, this is less functional than a pdf. Buy a real book from amazon, get it in a day and you can read it outside, you own it forever (and can sell it) and you can make notes in the margins/highlight with whatever tool you want. Bookshelf? Such a disappointment.

Make ebooks audiobooks!. It make reading ebooks easy by turning them to audiobooks.

zoom?? Text size options??. Functional but seriously feature-lacking. Can't fit pages to screen size, scrolling up/down doesn't lock to the vertical when zoomed in like you assume it should. Can't increase text size for reading on a phone.

Text-to-speech Needs upgrades. Not bad in some ways, but a few very annoying points. - cannot flip page when zoomed in. Button would be nicer. - text to speech cannot figure out words with hyphens split over two lines. This is extremely common in textbooks. Also cannot figure out how to read Canadian spelling and no option to customize pronunciation (like other free programs). - text to speech jumps all over the page. Not a specific sequence (jumps to page number, diagrams, etc) - text to speech sometimes reads a whole sentence as one word. Cannot understand it and have to stop each time to read it out

Overall good. The only room for improvement, would be the speaking the text option. It doesn’t always read through each point, paragraph, figure, or excerpts in a good order. Having the book available on my laptop, phone, and iPad are a very nice bonus.

can’t use with apple pencil …. i can’t write or annotate or anything!

Can not be printed. For my health of eyes , I would like to read paper version, however it can’t be printed.

Not flexible. Unable to change font size, unable to print notes or text, unable to write notes directly to text m

It’s a good way to read but flickering. I’ve enjoyed using this app to read and study for exams. The only major flaw I’m seeing in it is it’s random and sporadic screen flickering. I hope they fix it in future updates

Glitchy & cannot change reader Voices. Voiceover is the main reason I use this application, however even though the app states that you can change the voice-over voice that the application uses (like dialect, and preferred voices from your system IOS settings) these changes are not transferred from your system settings to the Vital Source Bookshelf app. The “Samantha” default voice is robotic and annoying and does not allow for a pleasant listening experience. Let me customize to “Siri Female (United States) like the app says that I should be able to.

Voice activated reading. Very helpful except it would be nice if the voice was more human and not so mechanical

Allow Use of Apple Pencil. Great app for digital textbooks with nice features (highlighting, audio, etc.). Would appreciate if the app integrated apple pencil use since it is extremely tedious to try and select certain lines with my finger only to click on the word “highlight” instead of simply highlighting with the pencil. Also there are not a lot of options for note taking within the app.

Apple pencil. Great app and functions well but please make it compatible with using apple pencil to highlight etc.

The reading. I use it because it’s the app that the college use. But the scrolling of pages are pretty awful. And you can’t change the font size! This last one should be pretty obvious.

Great, but has room to improve. Love it, though I would make two additions: More handwiriting options in textbook margins Syncing of flashcards across devices. Extra flashcards made on my laptop are not syncing to my tablet

Slow, very slow. The app is very slow and has many bugs. Most of my highlights take along time to load on the screen. The fact that you can’t flip the page in edit mode is also a great disadvantage.

Works okay… many bugs. Doesn’t allow you to adjust the margins (although there is an option to do so, it just doesn’t work). This makes it difficult to use larger fonts. When highlighting, the in text pop-up won’t always go away, forcing you to completely quit the app. Although there is the option to use different fonts, this feature does not work either.

Allow Apple Pencil capabilities. With modern studies, having a lot of your books into this app, and in an effort of getting convenience, developers should look into integrating the use of Apple Pencil by allowing notes capabilities, highlighting and noting on the pages using Apple Pencil. Also please consider dark mode capabilities. A lot of student tries to study at night and would really be helpful and less painful in the eyes to allow these capabilities.

Unreliable. The only function of this app is to display book pages and it doesn’t do it! It has happened already several times when I flip the page it shows me the download icon for hours, which is strange because the book is supposed to be fully downloaded before I open it

Good. It is good but I would like dark mode

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Great but could have some upgrades. This app is very simple and easy to use and is greats for textbooks. But once you leave the app it doesn’t save your spot and makes you go through the entire thing again just to start where you left it. Other than that though it’s very useful, you can highlight, search for words, easily access other downloads, etc. So I would definitely recommend but it could have some minor updates/ adjustments.

Useless Search Function and UI. This App has single-handedly ruined my experience in my college class for quiz taking because of it’s bogus in-app search function. Words searched within the app will sometimes just not show up, or only show up if typed with direct precision. The UI is ugly and makes it hard to read with, especially when scrolling. I’d rather just have a physical textbook, at this point, but I’m not fortunate enough for something like that. I’m getting 85% on open book quizzes often because this app just, is so bad. Don’t buy books on here, don’t give VitalSource money, they need to do better. I won’t ever use this service again, because of this experience. Do better.

Inconsistent. This bookshelf app works well for some books but not consistently. Some books don’t allow a dark background or different text siding, nor do they allow the speed of the reader to change. As a visually impaired person, I count on being able to use the dark mode, resizing of fonts, the font type, and for the reader to give me some control and help. Without those features, using this app is useless. Also, my book is telling me it will expire in 28 days. I paid for the book and should have it permanently. I was also hoping to download my book as a pdf so that I could try a different reader, but the app does not seem to give me that option. Not too helpful.

Terrible, Clunky, Unusable. I downloaded this app because I purchased the e-textbook option from Kaplan. If I realized I was marrying myself to this dismal app, I would have chosen otherwise. I suddenly can no longer access my textbooks because they want me to upgrade the app and do not support my iOS. Ridiculous considering I could read a .pdf on a 25 year old computer. Next, the app feels bloated and clunky. iBooks is better, and it comes on every iOS device! Navigation is terrible, only supports swipes (no tapping) and often must load pages if you try to advance just two or three pages rapidly. No brightness dimming or black background option. All around terrible. Kill this bloated pile.

Great, only one pet peeve. The app is great for reading off-line and it syncs accurately across devices. My only pet peeve is that it has no option to select a word and get a direct reference to the apple “look up” option for obscure words. Also, whenever I copy and paste a word into google to look up the meaning, I get a long reference with the word on the search box. If they are that concerned about plagiarism they need to make it more convenient to look up terms that are not in the glossary.

Sync on all devices broken. I have been using Vitalsource bookshelf for several years now. It is great, but there are few areas that frustrate me 1. Bookshelf on the web interface and my device are never the same - even though they claim it to be so 2. Page flow is not idea, it would be wonderful to have a free flow as an option 3. Read Aloud reads header and footer, figure and table captions etc. I am sure the “flow” for read aloud can be programmed to read only text body and avoid captions, footnote, page number etc. It does not help when you are listening to a book with all those distractions.

Poor support empathy. I installed this app on my iPhone 7 Plus iOS 12.3.1. I have a problem that I cannot see the bottom of the screen. I can pull it up, but then it pops back down under the page slider and cannot be seen. Is anyone else having this problem? The customer support person Tyler N, insists it’s my phone, asked me to reinstall the app, that did not work. Next, insists that I factory refresh my iPhone. Additionally, they claim they cannot replicate the symptom claiming it is due iOS 12’s continuous scroll feature and that is something they cannot help me with. And yet, they created this app, listed with Apple App Store, and marked iPhone and iPad compatible.

Great App, Great Company. When my books were trapped in my college dorm room and I was told I couldn’t return to retrieve them due to COVID-19, Bookshelf provided FREE electronic copies of their books to me and millions of other college students in need. The app works great and keeps track of highlights and notes with ease, but the generosity shown during a time of crisis (I would have had to spend HUNDREDS on electronic copies of all my books) will make me a permanent user & customer!

Restricting… No flexibility with content I PAID FOR…. Honestly, I just want to be able to use the ebook that I downloaded in my GoodNotes app on my iPad. There are way more note taking features that I can use that are not included here…. But there’s absolutely ZERO flexibility I’m finding in being able to use the book THAT I PAID FOR in the ways that i want to.. there’s no option for downloading as a PDF. I can only “print” 2 pages at a time, it takes forever to load, and when I try it leaves the largest, ugliest watermark across the page that gets in the way of all the text and book content anyways… And once a book is activated there’s no returns. I’m very disappointed. Waste of money, time, and effort…

Having issues with navigation. I typically LOVE the app and e-text. I have been having issues with the navigation with in the iPad app. I click on the page in the index and it takes me to another page. Or if I enter the Page # where I want to go, takes me to another page. I have reported this to IT with no resolution except the usually, uninstall, reinstall, restart, bla bla. I did all that and it is still not resolved.

Downhill. I used to love this app. It allowed me to read my textbooks when I wasn’t near them. It helped me carry less to class. AND it was easy to understand How to use the app. Since the update though, I can’t figure out to use it. I can’t find any textbooks on there and I’ve tried using everything that is listed as an option to search. I can’t figure out how to add textbooks to my library anymore AND the first textbook I had in there for my speech class is no longer in my library. Please fix this and make it easier for college students like myself and make it easier to find the textbooks

Help?!. I just purchased some books for this upcoming course and when I used the app, I received an error message, “download failed, you have disabled book downloads via cellular…”. I’m not using any cell data, and I’ve never encountered this problem before. Update: what worked for me was to reinstall the app, which downloaded the books that I had recently purchased. I’m hoping this gets fixed so that in the future.

This is THE app for the traveler!. I travel for work ~75%. This app allows me to hook my phone up to my car’s blue tooth and use the reading tool so I can listen to my assigned text reading as I drive. I can also put my earbuds in and listen through my phone app as I fly. It has saved me hours of reading time! I can listen to the chapters over and over all while I travel. It has seriously impacted my study habits and grades. Thank you!!!!

Don’t use this app unless you’re forced to. First, it disables the auto shut down on iPads and iPhones and drains the battery. It is ONLY black and white - no night reading options to change to grey or black backgrounds with white lettering. WORST - I downloaded a book. It shows as having 23 pages! Why? Because each chapter is a page! Try keeping track of where you are reading when one page really equals 15 to 30 pages. If you vary even a little from vertical when scrolling down it flips you to the next chapter/page. When you go back - guess what- you’re at the beginning of the chapter and have to find where you were.

Missing critical functionality. The app is very clunky to use. In particular the highlight function is a major time drain. The app would function a lot better by recognizing the Apple Pencil (for highlights and notes) vs finger (to scroll and turn pages). Enabling Apple Pencil as the tool (when present or through settings) to highlight as you drag it across text would be an improvement over the hold....wait a few seconds...then drag...then select highlight...then change color of highlight. Also, allowing people to annotate on the pages using Apple Pencil would be great. There are many times when i want to write a small note in the margins but can’t seem to do so. At least this app doesn’t crash.

BAD. Very frustrating. Please give us vertical scrolling options. It’s very annoying to have to manually turn the page every few minutes. It is also pretty annoying when trying to quickly flip through the book to find a specific page. Also the control f or find on page feature isn’t very useful if it only finds on the current singular page you can see at a time. And the feature to search within the book is horrible. It doesn’t find exact word matches at all. The results it does give are not what I’m looking for at all. Please make vertical scrolling T least within each chapter a thing. It’s very frustrating

Concerning Book shelf. I enjoy book shelf I only wish that on here I could have the tool to highlight. It is very important for my studies and so that in a month or 2 I would be able Togo back and find my notes. Another tool that I feel is necessary is search of a word that height lights this word throughout your chapter. Will you at anytime have this available for regular books not just academic reading. I will recommend Book Shelf to every one. Idelia

Access yesterday, all data gone today!. Apparently my iPad is a little too old for Vital Source so without warning all of my ebooks disappeared and were replaced with a single ebook doc in the library asking "Where Are My Books?". Just like that! I opened the ebook, it crashed and closed, wouldn't reopen then I was forced to download it again. The "Where Are My Books" ebook doc explains that the software should be updated to access the ebooks, but if your device is too old to update then you'll no longer have access to your content. So basically I no longer have access to any of my content. How lousy! A sign of the times when you are forced to purchase a new device to view your ebooks offline or you'll have to view strictly online.

I like that there’s an app...but. I like the app but there are a few frustrating things. I wish the app would stay signed in. I have to put in my password every time I open the app. This is frustrating. I have the password saved in my phone passwords but it does not automatically populate. This is because the app is called “Bookshelf” and the website is VitalSource Bookshelf. I have to manually select the password each time. Also, it would be nice if the highlights would sync across the app and to the website. Maybe this is impossible?

Speak-n-spell from the 80s. This is the worst app I have ever had the misfortune to be forced to use. I’m in grad school in 2018 at a high priced university and this is the best we can do? Scrolling is a nightmare. No page numbers to reference. Loading is ridiculously slow. There is nothing intuitive about navigation whatsoever. Text-to-speech....you should be embarrassed. Siri can read my text messages at an intelligible level, but reading a textbook is indistinguishable from the TI Speak-n-spell from 1978!!! Not a typo. It sounds like 40-year-old technology in an age where you can carry around terabytes of information in your pocket. I can’t believe this was duct taped into the app and heralded as a feature. How the reviews of this thing are so high is beyond me. Garbage. Absolute garbage.

Overall A Good App. The app is pretty good; especially with the most recent update. I just wish that it had a little bit more compatible features. One thing that I’ve been wanting is that it would sync with Apple’s Book App. There’s a few features that works better with that particular app than this one (i.e., note taking, highlighting, and things like that). I find myself going through a lot of steps just to be able to create a PDF so that I can read the material using that app. Other than certain features that can be updated, the app is really great.

Prefer books in print form. I’m not a fan of reading textbooks in a digital format. I find it hard to annotate the way I want to with this app. I can make a note, but I can’t see it next to the text if I want to go back to it later. I have to click on the note. Also, I use a lot of personal notation which are not possible with the app. It is especially difficult to precisely highlight text at the border of the next page. I have wasted much time trying to electronically annotate the text. It has really slowed down my reading and reduced my endurance.

Unable to view actual pages in iPhone & iPad. While I’m viewing the textbooks I’m reading, they only show as one continuous page through several pages. This is not great since I’d like to view the original published format the textbooks were made. This is also an issue when I’d like to cite pages, but I’m only given a page number when it doesn’t indicate which page I’m specifically at. If I could view pages individually and how they were originally made, it would make reading them and citing them way more pleasant and efficient.

I wish all my textbooks were ebooks. This ebook option for my textbook has been essential in my success for my class. I wish all of my textbooks were ebooks. It allows for offline access, so I could listen to my book anywhere, and it would pick up where I left off. I also loved that I could highlight and create notes as well.

Terrible. I had to purchase a textbook for school, and it made me download it to this app. The process of doing that was clunky- I had to create and sign into a couple of accounts, and it took way longer than it should have. The interface problems only got worse as I used the app. Everytime I click something it does something other than what I want it to do and it messes everything up. Idk how to explain it better-the interface is just horrible. Additionally, the chapter labels are unhelpful and misleading, and this just caused me to do the wrong chapter of homework. I can’t wait to finish this semester so I can delete this god forsaken app 🥳🥳

Good, But Could Be Better. It is very useful to have your textbooks in your pocket for whenever you have a spare minute to study. My one complaint is the audio playback that reads the text aloud. Although there are instructions within the app that show you how to select the appropriate voice, the app defaults to the standard iOS, which is not nearly as sophisticated and natural as newer Siri voices. Please fix as this would be a huge win for those of us who listen to our books while on our daily commutes. Thanks!

App is awful in comparison to the desktop version. I had the total opposite reaction than the other reviewer: this app is not user friendly AT ALL, particularly not on my iPhone. I love the version of the textbook that I use on my MacBook, but the version on the phone is terrible. When I flip the screen, the entire bottom of the text gets cut off and there’s no way to even scroll down to make it show, and when I hold my iPhone the traditional way, the text is so tiny it gives me a headache and I refuse to pinch and read it word by word just to make it bigger. A+ for the desktop version, F for the app, which is a serious bummer because I wanted to be able to read my textbook on the train.

App crashes - can’t access purchased content. The app worked well at first and then started crashing. I would open the app and see the textbook but it wouldn’t open for me. Then the app would close itself. As a student, my study time is very limited and extremely precious. I can’t afford to lose study time because the app won’t show me the textbook. I also don’t have extra funds that would allow me to pay for the same book again just to get a hard copy. This app needs improvement! Don’t rely on it as the sole source for your textbooks. Use it only as a backup when you are studying on-the-go and cannot bring your books with you (that’s if you can afford to have both versions of your textbooks).

Great app, poor audio. I love this app. I’m a nursing student and my school does all of our learning through evolve. The one disappointment I have with thus app is that the read-aloud function is terrible. The voices are obviously computer generated and are impossible to listen to for longer than 10 seconds. I just wish it was a real person talking. That would make it possible for me to listen the book when I’m commuting.

Crashes a lot!. I am taking college classes and I need my books available at all time. I thought this would be a good way to do it. Every time I am o reading the program closes on me and I have to reopen to continue reading. This program is looking a bit dated and it offers very little as features. Searches, also crash, if your are looking from the search tap sometimes it just lingers there without any warnings. It is a dated application... ☹️

The absolute WORST app for e-books. I would give this application zero stars if I could. There is no benefit to having this on any platform whatsoever. The lack of responsiveness, the slowing of the browser when you highlight too much on one part of the book, and the decrease in functionality between using devices like an Apple Pencil make it a nightmare to work with. To put things into perspective, I am using the latest iPad Pro with up-to-date software and have had nothing but consistent issues. It makes for quite the experience during finals week.I had hoped that it would be easier to manipulate than carrying around a bunch of books, but vital source has proved that sometimes fixing something when it isn’t broken makes it worse.

My Pros and Cons. From a general perspective the app does it really good, helps you access your purchases from your iphone, iPad or computer, even so, I found it a little bit childish with big icons and a lot of colors I understand that’s a personal opinion and not really something subjective but, the reason why I give 2 stars to the app is, wen it comes to jump pages or basically the facility of underlying with the Apple Pencil on the iPad, the app just doesn’t do it. Now paper books are disappearing and companies are looking for the best way to pursue the digital market, if they did a change in design to make it more attractive and involve the Apple Pencil I think they will become my favorite book app.

Needs an update. Its great better than the platforms often used for school minor thing It needs better pen support and the highligting function to work properly you can select a passage but won't highlight anything at all. Lastly a way to get books across devices including all the notes and stuff. Needs an update for sure

Not a good reading experience. Re-review: the app has changed a bit. Some glitches were modified. Still I am overall not satisfied with the reading experience. Highlighting a textbook is a pain. The app is extremely sensitive to touch and whenever I place my hand on my Ipad It moves the page around or changes to another page. This is so frustrating! 😟 Previous Review: Honestly, this app is not good. I bought a textbook that I can only access through this app which is not good. I cannot highlight material and everything is clunky, it glitches, It is not a comfortable reading experience... very dissatisfied with this app and the fact that I must use it to read my 200$ book 😕

Great app. I love this app. It offers everything I need to make reading boring textbooks enjoyable such as the ability to change the background color, font size, and even the font itself. It also offers the ability for audio without having to pay anything extra which is amazing. I used to buy my textbooks from kindle but never again. This app is so much better!

Everything was good until today. I usually have no problems with this app but for some reason today, I can’t open my textbook. I use this app for school obviously so I tried to open a different text book and that text book opened. I’m taking American History and I can’t open my textbook because the app says I need to update it but the app doesn’t have an update. If I could get some feedback on how to fix it then that would be pretty great.

Poor support and issues with purchases. Because I entered a different email when checking out, I can no longer access all my books. I was told by customer support that if I changed the email on my account it would correct the problem. It did not. Also, the notes do not sync between platforms. So the notes I take on the mobile app are useless in class on my computer. If I had known how poor the functionality was, I would’ve spent the extra money on the physical textbooks. I do not recommend this app at all. There are much better, more consistent, ways to take notes and read electronic texts.

Adequate. This reader is adequate. I’m using it only because I don’t have a choice of apps for my textbooks (due to DRM, I think). Page turning is wonky. I don’t like having an infinite scroll instead of a standard horizontal page turn. And since this is used by so many students for textbooks, it really would be beneficial to have Apple Pencil support, so I can highlight, markup and take notes in my own handwriting. It does allow highlights and notes, but that interface isn’t great, and it is not the same as being able to write on the page.

Terrible app! Fix the search function!. This app is terrible. It’s almost impossible to read the textbooks, the way the pages are set up doesn’t make any sense (you have to swipe sometimes to switch the page which doesn’t even work sometimes; some pages have the page numbers, while others don’t), plus the search function DOES NOT WORK. This app needs an update that fixes the search function and makes it so you can see which chapter and section you are in when you are reading a page. There’s no way to know where you are in the text unless you pull up the index on the side and look at the page numbers.

interfase improvements. Is a good app, but it could improve users interfase, for example, chose which method to change pages, because taping creates a lot of miss turning page when using apple pencil, allow different functions between pencil and finger (scribing vs taping, annotate vs panning), but in general therms good sinking and reliable, thanks Please let the user choose the method to change the page, because tapping in a multi-tasking environment is a complete mess, a lot of miss turning pages, no palm rejection when using other apps over, keep waiting for independent finger vs apple pencil, thanks

Deactivated from devices. I was loving this app until it just forced me to deactivate textbook access from all my devices. I’ve contacted customer support and to no prevail, I haven’t had this issue resolved. Hopefully, I can get this issue rectified soon bc it was so convenient to access my textbooks from iphone. Update: I called technical support and they were able to resolve my issue. I’m back in business. Love it!

Swipe Functionality Needs Improvement. If you accidentally move your finger the wrong way, Bookshelf will move you to the next chapter. Not only that, it erases your previous chapter position. Reading through long and complicated books decreases the UX and makes it a nightmare to scroll through and find your previous position (and there’s added time loss from trying to remember where you left off). I can appreciate fast page turns, but seriously consider adding some memory marker for where we last flipped from.

Decent Ebook App. Overall decent app, but still in the infancy stages. Formatting in some textbooks are annoying because you have to scroll down through the pages rather than swipe to flip the page. This means that if you make one touch, you could be in the next chapter, and you have to back to the previous chapter then scroll and scroll to find your page. The notification for expired textbooks won’t stop appearing. Yes, I know the book has expired! I deleted it and it’s not there, so why keep telling me this?

So close to perfection.... ...and yet so far. I love the accessibility of the ebooks on my iPad. I love the features it has but it has one flaw: the highlight. I can’t use my Apple Pencil to highlight and I have to use my finger. I already turned on the fast highlight option but it doesn’t work for me. I drag my finger across the text I want highlighted whether fast or slow and it still doesn’t highlight all the text I wanted. If they can fix this slight inconvenience, it would be a 5 star review.

It’s good... but add a store. It needs a store, and then I wouldn’t change a thing after that. I use this for my schoolbooks, and I give it five stars... (while I write this bookshelf is updating) I have science, and math on bookshelf that I use every day. After they add a store where you could get or buy books, then I wouldn’t change a thing. I’m a sixth grader and I say, personally, from my experience, GET BOOKSHELF. It is helpful, and you can just go to the app, go to the book you want, and BOOM, your reading. I recommend this app for kids like me.

Very slow and clunky. I am a physician and have a number of medical e-textbooks provided through VitalSource. This app has been a constant source of frustration for me for the past year plus and seems to be one of the most poorly designed apps on my phone. It is very slow to open, search, and navigate through books and text, frequently lagging for several seconds. It often crashes which is not a problem I have with virtually any other app I use given I have a relatively new iPhone 11 Pro with iOS fully updated. The text size and margin presets do not look nice. The design is just generally very clunky and inelegant. It makes it inconvenient to access the information I need in e-textbooks.

Why does Siri read so many “BLACK SMALL SQUARE”??. My book reads off a lot of different bulleted items and it says “black small square” most the time when it encounters these bullet points... other times it doesn’t mention the bullet points which is kind of inconvenient too because then it becomes confusing to discern when one bullet starts and one ends –unless you’re looking at the book–which I’m shouldn’t need to do because I’m using the read aloud feature. Other times the program freezes on these “black small square” lists and I need to reopen the program and skip to the next normal paragraph. I DID VERY POORLY IN CLASS YESTERDAY WHEN WE PLAYED JEOPARDY BECAUSE OF THIS :(. Please fix. My book is “nursing today trends and transitions” 9th edition by zerwech

Overall Decent, but not perfect. Decent app for my class textbook. Has good search function Sometimes renders LaTeX cut-off so you can’t see the equations (-1 star) Not great for taking notes, especially with an iPad (I want to be able to draw my notes rather than type them - I wish it was more like a PDF editor) Also too easy to lose my page when jumping between chapters - wish there was a consistent “jump back” button or something so that when I hit a title and it changes pages I don’t immediately lose my spot. (It does have bookmarks but it’s difficult to remember to use them.)

Never had to read my textbook again.. For me, I cannot spend hours pouring over a textbook and be expected to process anything. This app is great because not only does it read to you, but you can alter how fast and slow it reads to you, you can pause and highlight (with an added note) anytime you want, and you can access everything without flipping through your entire textbook by going to the notebook tab. Truly a top tier app for students, definitely using this next school year.

Text layout issues?. The app is great and all, but I have a major complaint - I don’t know if it’s from an update on your guys’ end or something else, but suddenly a few days ago the text in my textbook appeared to be centered right in the middle of the page and there’s no way to change it; no formatting option available, and it makes the lines super small and difficult to work with.