RedShelf

That’s the positive side. Compared to other apps that I use for buying my books, such as Pearson/Revel, it performs poorly. It would be nice if it did a better job of syncing where I left off in the app to when I access itthrough the website. Also, the robotic voice is off-putting. One thing I love about the Revel app is that it has real humans reading the chapters back to you. Since I use the app on my hours commute to school/work I’ll press play & listen to the robot. They could do a simple improvement of letting you adjust the rate of speed at which the robot reads back to you. Instead, I have to listen at their slow robotic pace. Also, if you add that adjustment, maybe you could consider letting me pick where I want the robot to stop/start reading. Revel forces you to have to listen to them from the beginning of the chapter, and although a humans voice sounds much better than a robot, it’s not the most productive.

If I could use any other app I would. DRM means one text book I am required to use in locked into this terrible app indefinitely. The issues are compounded by the choice of the publisher to release a PDF ebook instead of any proper ebook format. As such, the rendering of the pages is static - no font or color or contrast options. That’s the point where the deficiencies of this app become apparent. One star for RedShelf being consistent: the web browser access is just as bad as the mobile app and performs identically. Pages are slow to load and flash loading graphics at every single page turn. Despite pinch-zoom being a feature on nearly every multi-touch surface, RedShelf requires clicking single buttons for zoom in or out. The rest of the DRM friendly features (limits on copy or print) make accessing information even more challenging if the text layout is locked into a US letter shaped page - which has no scale that fits a whole page fully legible on screen. Free ebook readers have more features than RedShelf. Other textbook distributors have apps that while just as restrictive, at least load the pages smoothly and instantly. Maybe I got the fringe case of the worst optimized book in their catalog, but that indicates a commitment to capitalism not education. Quality is judged by sampling and my sample was a complete dud.

My review won’t matter. Some noob who has just downloaded this app will write a 5 star review and wash my real, tried and true, review out. I have used this app for 2 years, only because the company has a monopoly on digital books. This should be completely illegal. Why is it that every digital college text book has to be through this horrific app. Much of my time has been wasted waiting for loading pages, images to generate, and because the session times out. If you look down to work out a homework problem, I guarantee you will have to reload the entire app which takes varying amount of time you’ll spend waiting. Do you want to use the index? Good luck! You’ll waste 10 minutes flipping back and forth. I hate this company with every fiber of my being. Your company is not STEM major focused at all! You hate us and only want more money. Guarantee that the company culture there is terrible and the employees hate their jobs too. When I have to buy a textbook and I see that I have to get a digital copy, I cry a little knowing I am giving this company more money just to continue screwing over students.

I was introduced to RedShelf when I started my adult journey to attaining a bachelors degree. I enjoy the site for the most part, there are a few items that could be improved in my opinion. One, the search engine can be a bit frustrating at times with how it displays search results. I’d like to see a page number and chapter number that is easier to quickly identify. The selection tool for copying and highlighting is a bit touchy when trying to select sections of text and a bit aggressive. Lastly, I’d like to see the bookmarks improved, now I don’t have any good ideas off-hand, I just know I use them and find them to be less useful when coming back to an area.

I had the misfortune of buying my textbooks before realizing that they are only available via this app. The app is barely usable if you read in a linear fashion. The navigation is non-intuitive. Sideway swipes go to the beginning of prior/next chapter, and scrolling up and down is the way to read the book. I keep accidentally side swiping to the next chapter, and then I can’t go back to the exact place I accidentally swiped from. So inconvenient. But even overlooking this design flaw, the app is just glitchy. Sometimes half the page is simply white, sometimes there is no response to swiping at all. I tried to bookmark a page and clicking the bookmark button did nothing at all but a day later suddenly that spot had 20 bookmarks. Sometimes the whole app freezes and I have no choice but to close it and restart from the beginning. Bottom line, you can limp along with this app for any text you read linearly. If you buy any sort of reference manual where you have to find items or switch sections frequently, the app is simply unusable because of the long load time, freezing and constant glitches.

This app is sub par at best. When using a small mobile device like an iPhone, the app maintains the textbook appearance. This causes many problems. I recognize an iPhone is not an ideal platform. However, I have used other readers that are better. The only reason I am using this is because it is for a school textbook. Frequently, the textbook wants to “snap” to a position that is not where the reader needs to be. The navigation buttons are large and obscure the page information. Moreover, the highlight/annotations function is not ideal. The app too quickly “thinks” the user want to highlight. Because of the “snap back” the user often ends up highlighting irrelevant information Lastly, if one wants to use the read aloud function, the read order is often out of sequence. It reads everything, including the page numbers and chapter titles at the bottom of the page, as well as copyright information below the photos. For mobile devices, the developers ought to incorporate a simple text view option that could include photo/graphic thumbnails that the user can tap to expand. .

Sure, I can rent my books at a fairly reasonable price, but I will not be renting any more books through RedShelf again. I rented two books. If I always have an Internet connection, I don’t really have a problem. However, if I lose Internet connection for any reason I am not able to view my books. One of my books I cannot download to my tablet or my iPhone. My other book I’m only allowed to download to one device. However, with the new update my app crashed and I had to reload the app. Then I attempted to re-download the book. My account shows it is still downloaded to my tablet, which it is not because it crashed, so now I can’t download my book to my one tablet. I ended up finding a digital copy elsewhere or I found an older paper edition on eBay. Red shelf, you already make me use your app to view these books. Fine, but top restricting how I use the book in your app. Let me download it to as many devices as I feel like, to view it when ever I feel like (internet available or not). When my time is up, then just delete the book from my account. I don’t know why you have to make it so complicated.

I purchase all of my books as ebooks because I need the text to speech feature, and this is my first time where I have been forced to use RedShelf. Unfortunately, this feature on RedShelf is not functioning. I have tried to get help online but when you try to get to the solve ticket online, you are directed to the exact same place you started. It is impossible to find help or talk to support. I have followed all of the trouble shooting steps I have found online, but nothing is working. Once I got the feature to underline the chapter heading, but most of the time it doesn’t even do that much less have sound. 10 minutes after I walked away the stupid app read one sentence but since then it has not happened again no matter how hard I try. Won’t work on the app or online. This is the WORST ebook reading app I have ever used! I would advise if you are given the choice for your book to be on RedShelf or vital source or really anything else, do not choose RedShelf (at least if you need the text to speech feature!!)

I am required by university to use this app. If you’re not required to use this, you might want to look elsewhere. The usability of this app is quite terrible. While it may look like there are fun features through this app, the essential features one might deem important and critical in a textbook app are left frustrating. For example, if you like to have the textbook read aloud while you follow along, that can be a challenge. There’s a overwhelming amount of choices for “voices” to choose from. However, while there’s the features of MANY voices, I have a hard time finding even one that is somewhat comprehensive. These voices can be very hard to understand. I don’t feel like the need for 20 different voices to read a textbook if I can’t understand even one of them. I feel like a max of 2 different voice modes would be beneficial. Especially if one of them is understandable. This app leaves much to be desired for the amount of money you invest in this company.

The tech support does a fantastic job at helping resolve issues the application creates. The primary problem is that after an update or looking at one of my books on a web browser, this app will pop up an alert saying that the publisher only lets you view the material only on one device. Okay, got it. But, even if I delete the offline data, sign out from this app, and delete the app from my device - the next time I download Red Shelf, login, and try to download the books again … that stupid publisher warning will pop up and prevent me from downloading the book(s). To that extent, I would advise anyone using this app to view your books from a web browser (Chrome or Firefox. Safari on iPad works, but on Mac, any highlight shows up as black stripes in the background.). The extra star is for the tech support. Overall the app is a bust and is more frustrating than useful.

It is amazing and convenient that I can access my books online or via the app. However, it is devastatingly disappointing that the “text to speech” does not work properly. It sounds like a robot that cannot read most words. It also reads invisible words on the page that are visible to the eye and one cannot choose where to make it start to read. I work full time, so being able to listen to audio books for my studies are necessary and vital during driving. However, I cannot use this function on any of the books I have purchased or rented from RedShelf. I might as well have purchased a paper book, because Instead of being able to use a “function” that is stated as an option, I have to loose additional sleep and time to read- as I would if I were to have the paper copy in hand- instead of being able to have the option for either to fit/suit my needs for that day/time.

GET YOUR TEXTBOOKS ANOTHER WAY!!! RedShelf was the cheapest way for me to rent my textbooks digitally however I would have much rather paid more for a better user experience. I have the app on my iPad Pro with the magic keyboard and this app does not support the scrolling function on my keyboard and it also doesn’t allow for zooming in and out to a certain scale, it only gives you a plus and minus button. Also the voice-to-text feature in this app might as well not even be there because it is the most robotic voice that is very dysfunctional and doesn’t bother to stop reading at periods for new sentences and is very difficult to understand. Plus, you cant adjust the speed that it reads at. And when it finishes reading one page, instead of automatically starting the next page it just rereads the same page you just read. I really hope the developers read my suggestions as well as all of the other reviews.

I’m a full time nursing student and I was assigned a ton of text books for this semester… I opted to get digital copies of my text books because I didn’t want to lug them around. Knowing my text books are all in one app and can be used off Wi-Fi is a GODSEND. I’m also an avid flash card learner and the built in flash card generator is amazing. It feels like I’m using quizlet! Love this platform so much.

This app is by far one of the worst apps I have ever used. I have to use it for school as some of my classes leverage this for textbooks. Sadly, it is worked into the cost of tuition, so I have no way to opt out (believe me I have tried). I don’t understand technology well enough to critique this to a very specific level. But the reading experience is clunky, including highlighting text which is an especially crucial feature when using a textbook. I don’t know how these textbooks were imported into the app, but there are always typos that aren’t quite typos. By that I mean, there will be weird glitches in the text. And nearly every time I open the app, my textbooks freeze, forcing me to uninstall the app and re-download if I want to use it. I’m not invested enough in this app to want the app to be improved. But if you are an educator and considering using this app in your class, please don’t. Or at least to give students a way to opt out.

This app is worse than no book at all. It is clunky to use it requires a connection to the internet just to use it. It skips around when you’re trying to read. The audio reading is absolutely horrible it follows the wrong text that is being read aloud so that you aren’t actually able to follow along and distract you from following along on your own. The way the app is designed it is more of a distraction from the actual reading and studying experience then it is a help. It is disappointing that any publisher would think that utilizing this app would be smart. In my opinion, a textbook publishing company that uses this app does not care about the educational experience of the students in any shape or form. I have been a proponent of electronic textbooks for years and this app makes me question my stance. I would give this app zero stars if it was possible.

The only thing positive to say about this app is that SOMETIMES I am able to access a page or two of the textbooks I have ordered. This app is clunky and full of bugs. Good luck trying to turn a page quickly. Not going to happen. Unfortunately, 3 of my 4 textbooks are only accessible through redshelf. I am unable to invert the color settings so reading the text is hard on the eyes and difficult to do for extended periods of time. I changed the settings on all my devices to try and adjust the color situation, this worked for everything in the app EXCEPT FOR THE PAGES OF THE TEXT. I had hoped opening the books on different devices would somehow change how the app performed but regardless of device or internet connection this app is still horrible. I hate ebooks thanks to this garbage app. I will never try to save money by purchasing an ebook again. Avoid this app at all costs. I read the poor reviews before downloading, however since I had no choice...here we are.

I bought ALL my textbooks for nursing school from here and was really excited when I first looked at them. I started with the website on my computer and was quickly disappointed. The highlight tool is awful, most of the time it does not highlight what I want it to highlight and then I have to go find what it did highlight and delete it. And the scrolling it so bad. It’s all glitchy and either doesn’t scroll or scrolls too far, making it very difficult to read without interruption. I decided to download the app to see if that made it better and I downloaded my books and now my app won’t open. I just redownloaded the app so hopefully I can read my books (without downloading them) but I am not hopeful it will be any better than using the website on my computer. Very disappointed in the functionality of this website/app and will definitely be buying physical books from here on out.

I have to use this app for the ebooks I bought for school and I’ll never buy another ebook that requires the us of this app. The only pro is that my book there when I have internet, usually. I cannot download the book because it keeps telling me I have it downloaded to the iPad that I’m trying to download it to. I’ve deleted all data in the app, uninstalled/reinstalled the app, logged out and back in to no avail. The worst part about this app is all the “things” you can do that they tout. You can take notes and highlight. But it does no good if you’re not allowed to have electronic devices in the classroom because you can’t copy/paste or print them. (It says you can print but I have yet to get past the “exporting to PDF” stage) I’ve also tried printing pages out, of which the amount you’re allowed is decided by the author or publisher of the book. Same result, just stays in the processing stage and you never get to print. I contacted CS and got nothing but an automated “we received your ticket” email. Also, it constantly freezes and I have to close and reopen it to get it to work again. I’m talking like every 7-10 when highlighting and every 25-35 min just reading. Fool me once, and mess with my grades, you don’t get a second chance.

Highlights refresh the entire page. This is a nuisance for the way that I break down my reading for school, as I highlight key points in different colors to make it easier to reference. To me 4 colors is insufficient for highlights. Somewhat frequently after a highlight it will reload to a different part of the page. I also have had it glitch to where I cannot use the highlighter until I close the app put completely and open it up again. My last gripe is the footnotes… kindle pops the footnote up in a box on the same page, but this hyperlinks to the end of the chapter. My readings require knowing what is in the footnotes, so this really disrupts the flow of using the textbook. Otherwise, it functions as a readable ebook app.

Originally I was excited to be able to read and annotate my textbook in my tablet, but when I tried the highlighting feature I saw how it’s a bit sloppy. Let me explain, when trying to highlight a word at times instead of only highlighting the word I wanted it would go all over the place in the page and not allow me to actually select what I wanted to. For example, I wanted to highlight the first word of a new paragraph but not only would it highlight the word I want but also the last word from the last paragraph (if it were in the same page). If it’s possible to fix this bug/mistake it would be better for the users.

I'm using this app to read a single textbook I bought digitally and it is a nightmare trying to highlight the information I need to. Selecting a sentence is a nightmare, the tool wants to select the entire page or nothing at all. For some mysterious reason the highlight tool also refuses to highlight the first word of a new paragraph without also highlighting the last word of the last sentence. Literally, this app would rather highlight a setence without the first letter of the sentence being included rather than just highlight the single sentence I want to highlight without the last word from the previous line jumping in. Literally a total nightmare and this is the only tool you will want to use (aside from the audio tools). What's the point if the highlighter doesn't work correctly? Seriously, fix the highlighter tool.

The majority of my required textbooks rely on this app to access them which is nice that they’re all in one place… BUT they’re very difficult to use the text to speech feature to dictate the text because after about 5 to 10 minutes, it glitches out and stutters and then crashes my iPad completely, resulting in a reboot and then I have to start all over to find exactly where I was in the book, just for it to continue crashing. Overall incredibly frustrating that such a simple thing causes it to totally malfunction, especially since most schools are using this platform for textbooks that don’t work properly. Very disappointed, it’s the entire reason I purchased an iPad for classes and it doesn’t even work right.

This is a decent digital book app. The problem is the reader has so many glitches. You have to keep your screen open the whole time it reads or it shuts off— stops reading. And then, if your screensaver accidentally turns off your screen, when you turn it back on, the reader reverts to the slowest speed possible so you have to clear it from your open apps and start over coming into the book fresh all over again to be able to get the speed to what you want it. Bookshelf has a much better reader. If your book is there use that one instead. It will continually read the book without needing it to be shown on the screen.

None of the additional tools in this app work correctly. When highlighting, it’s extremely difficult to select the section you want highlighted without excluding words or letters or including words or letters in a different section. The audio reader sometimes skips sections entirely or starts where you don’t want it to and because the highlighter tool doesn’t work properly, the flash card tool doesn’t work properly either. If you’re just looking for a simple ebook without any additional tools then that’s fine, but if you’re paying an additional service fee of $5 for each ebook you buy on this app, I’d expect it to work properly. I don’t think I’ll be buying anymore ebooks from this store. Even attempting to use these tools is extremely frustrating and time consuming

The app is garbage: slow, buggy, and often unresponsive. The only reading option is continuous scroll with no ability to read it with pages like a real book or like kindle let’s you. The continuous scroll is awful and often cuts off in the middle of a section, so you may have to wait for multiple sections to load to read a single chapter. Sometimes it cuts off at the header for a section, so if you click on the TOC it takes you to the last page of the section, then you have to exit for the next section to load. If you open the sidebar to access the TOC or to search, it doesn’t collapse correctly and you get stuck with a tiny sliver of text as if the sidebar was still open and the only work around is to go back a section, wait for it to load, then go forward again and wait for it to load. The service is garbage: outages for over 24 hours during finals with nothing more than a “we’re sorry for an inconvenience” message on the error page. I would never use this service if it didn’t have a monopoly on the ebooks i need for class. Even then, often I cannot use it during class to follow along because it is so slow and buggy.

The bad news is, for so many college texts that you will need to use, there is just no alternative. The technology in this app is DREADFUL. God forbid you need to highlight anything. It kind of highlights what you need. Or at least gets it into the neighborhood of what you were highlighting. But then your highlight appears somewhere else. Unless you keep reorienting the book every time you highlight something. Voice-to-text is HORRIBLE! Look, you’re going to be more or less forced to use this app. And they are charging you an obscene amount of money even to rent a book, but rest assured NONE of that money goes into this app. I’ve been using it for more than two years, and NOTHING HAS CHANGED. Learn to despise this app now. It’s garbage and the publisher is literally stealing your money for these books.

Instead of buying my textbook for my history class I found that I could download it and use it through RedShelf instead for my fall 2023 semester in college. However mid-semester an update uploads for the app, and I opened RedShelf and a message popped up saying that it could be buggy for IPad users. I thought it wouldn’t be bad. It is somehow much, much, much, MUCH worse than the app had been before the update. Now my pages jump around my screen instead of just staying put besides manually resizing it. The book pages will move with each flip of a page making it absolutely user hostile. I used to be able to highlight words I was not familiar with and a bubble would pop up and tell me a short definition of the word, now it won’t. Now the app doesn’t even let me highlight a word to cite a sentence. If I even touch the page on screen, the whole page flips out and jumps around screen. Now my college work is ten times harder, especially when I need to reference the book in split screen on my ipad with word. NEW UPDATE MADE IT UNUSABLE. Wish I could use the book elsewhere but I am stuck using horrible interface instead.

I am a law school student bought my books online and it was a mistake. The app is complete trash and non-functional on an iPad and keeps restarting to a completely different page. You cannot highlight properly, as is cannot do more than a few words or one line at a time. When you have to read 100s pages a week, it is a complete waste of time and money. Will not use this app and instead will go directly on the website to read. Absolute garbage. Note to law students that buy textbooks from WestAcademic, do NOT get e-book because they use RedShelf. Several of us are making a complaint to West Academic as well, because this is unacceptable and unrealistic. Never again. I will only buy print books and thankfully we all are going to share the textbooks now.

I like most of my textbooks to come in audio versions or have that as an additional option because I have a busy schedule, like most I’m sure, and it’s very helpful to have an audio book so I can listen to it while I’m driving or trying to multitask. I wish it would just continue to read instead of stopping at the end of the page. If I’m driving and trying to listen to my book, I can’t just take my eyes off the road to click “next page”. I wish I could have gotten my current textbook on another app/platform that has a better audio book. Even when I listen online while I’m trying to do my assignments, it just stops in the middle of a paragraph and will end up starting from the beginning when it decides to work again.

I spent hundreds on study books and keep getting stuck trying to open them, never mind read them. When using RedShelf on the browser it’s great, and the highlights select properly and tag the text no problem. I’m the app? It randomly highlights words all around the text you want, including the footnotes you hadn’t even selected. It also doesn’t let the text to speech option start where you need, while also randomly reading all the footnotes and not giving a skip option to go to the actual book content you paid obscene money for. It’s an expensive endeavor with zero value for money. 0/10 don’t recommend and I 100% regret spending money on books that are mandated to only work in this godforsaken app

I’ve used this service since 2015 and the app for about a year. The platform has a bunch of spoofs trying to prevent copyright infringement, and while that’s okay, it prevents students from using the media to their advantage. To the contrary, you have a limited availability to listen to text to speech options across platforms and devices, the app does not follow along while reading and will skip at the first ‘jiggle’ of your device. Furthermore, it seems to specifically inhibit functionality on iOS platforms to copy materials or content for note taking and will not work in the background while performing other tasks. To top it off, if I update to the software, I am notified I will lose any saved content on the app… half star?

I want to have the version of this app that the 5 star reviews have, because there is no way this is that version. I know those 5 star reviews are probably bots paid for by the company, but whatever. This app crashes all the time and it prevents itself from opening with an endless waiting screen. The developers must absolutely not care or be painfully incompetent. This app is truly horrible, and I will be buying my textbooks via physical form. Carrying 5 textbooks will be less painful than waiting for this app to work. I would ask the developers to update this app, but that would require actual thought and effort, something that they obviously do not posses nor wish to work up to.

I rely heavily on text to speech and audio book formats. Using text to speech, the RedShelf desktop interface does a good job of allowing me to pick up where I left off after I exit, and functions well overall except for allowing to begin reading at a specific section and also the skip ahead function only caries me on to the following word. The mobile version has the same drawbacks, plus it does not allow me to navigate away from the screen, does not pick up where I left off (starts from the beginning of the chapter each time I exit or the app gets interrupted (this is also the case when I connect or disconnect a Bluetooth headset or switch to car audio).

I cringe when I have a book assigned through brytewave/redshelf. I have never experienced a worse format to read a book. I love ebooks usually, but this is very cumbersome and not useful. Books get locked into the last place read with no way to force them to your current reading “location”. The pages are not resized to be easily read like a typical epub or kindle format — instead you’re left panning back and forth on the screen. I once reached out to customer support and they said that the reader is really intended for laptop use, well that’s not an ereader and don’t make a terrible app for a phone if you don’t want people reading on their phone. The text to speech is also very poor, I’m glad I don’t need that feature.

I prefer readers that allow me to scroll vertically. On my iPad the left/right arrows appear on top of the text which is annoying. At the text size I like read at I have to perform a vertical scroll in addition to the previous/next page which is absolutely annoying for me. Additionally, the ability to highlight text is definitely worse than other readers as it is almost impossible to highlight the exact text you want. This product is mediocre compared to my favorite readers and I wish I wasn’t stuck using it for a class at the local university.

The RedShelf app on my iPad is so slow, it is unusable. Loading an eBook takes 10+ minutes (if it loads at all), and each highlight can take 15+ seconds. The web app is not much better. I have contacted RedShelf Support multiple times about the issue. After receiving a canned response to my initial requests for help, it takes weeks for their support team to follow up on my issue. Even when they do follow up, their troubleshooting steps do not resolve the problem, and I am left with an unusable app. I hope that West Academic will consider offering their eBooks through multiple apps/vendors, rather than forcing people who purchase their books to use RedShelf.

I just started grad school online, so I have used other textbook e-reader programs before. My biggest gripe with this one is how difficult it is to zoom in and move around the page. Considering how small the average text in a textbook is, this should have been a priority. Ridiculous load times when starting or turning pages, if it loads at all. There’s about a 50% chance it loses what page I’m on. The cut/paste/highlight/look up feature doesn’t actually select the words I am trying to pick. Lastly, even though the books are downloaded, I can’t get them to launch when my WiFi is down. Please fix all of these problems, or the next two years of school are going to me more difficult than necessary. Thank you.

The accessibility settings for the books are terrible. You can only zoom, it does not enlarge text size, making it difficult to read small text easily in the only book I’m using this for. You don’t have an option for different fonts for dyslexia. The highlighting tool is very flawed and difficult to use. The entire app is completely online so if you need to study in areas with bad connection or run out of internet data, you’re screwed. It’s proven glitchy with my dorm WiFi and it loads page by page so I have to click back and forth between pages when it messes up the page I’m on. This is just stuff I discovered in the first 2 hours of use.

This app and website is absolute trash, pay the extra money somehow and get it from a better source. All pages of one chapter are on one screen that you have to scroll completely down, not only does this make you lose your place often due to accidental swipes but it’s just a ridiculous format. You can’t access information from a chapter easily at all. The highlighting functions are awful. It highlights the wrong thing and you can’t adjust the área, you have to delete the highlight and start over each tome. On top of that, sometimes when you want to delete the highlight it will select all the other highlighted areas and DELETE EVERYTHING! I’m tired of this, do not do it to yourself and use a different company.

When I highlight certain pieces of text it doesn’t allow me to select the precise text I want to, putting up the “save” box before I’m finished. so I end up either highlighting too little or too much, and have to either keep highlighting or erase everything that was highlighted. Also, I’m grateful that I can pause and play the audio, but I’m frustrated that I can’t select exactly where I wanted to start reading from. Fast forwarding and backtracking are just too difficult for me please, fix this!! Thank youIn advance!

I have to use this app for my college class because you can access textbooks through it, but it glitches constantly. It won’t let me highlight more than one word, the bookmarks keep spazzing, and it won’t let me download so I can read the textbook offline. It says I already have it downloaded but I don’t? The website is so much better but I can’t have constant access to it due to internet issues. I was really hoping the app would let me access books without limitation or constant glitches. I’ve already paid so much for the textbook, least they could do is fix their app or let textbooks be accessible offline in the first place. So frustrating.

Every time I use the search bar the app shows only half my screen, forcing me to close the app and reopen it. It is extremely annoying when I’m trying to do my homework. Also I would like to be able to write on the pages and zoom in and out more easily. The actual search needs refining as well. It would be nice to be able to search just on the page or chapter I’m looking at. Search bar how it is, is literally unusable. How is it that all the most recent reviews are about things that need to be fixed yet the app hasn’t been updated in 6 months?! Ridiculous that we’re forced to use this crap app.

Worst app I’ve ever used for any purpose. Seriously. I’ve wasted hours of my time just waiting on this app. Book takes 5 minutes to load, freezes frequently to re-load (another 5 minutes), highlighting causes the text to slide off the screen and back on again every single time… A simple PDF of the text would be infinitely better. In theory, I could download some of the pages as a PDF from the website, but the website doesn’t work any better than the app. I’ve been waiting 28 minutes now to download less than 30 pages of the book, so I decided to come on here to at least use that time productively.

This app is nice if you want to read your textbook and only read it. However, if you want to highlight something… that is a completely different story. Not only does the highlight feature highlight random words in a sentence sometimes but other times it simply will not highlight what you want at all. Instead, it will highlight the entire page, or the sentence above what you selected. It is incredibly frustrating. In addition, if you accidentally highlight an extra word somewhere in your highlighting endeavors, you cannot simply backtrack. No. Instead, you need to trash the entire highlight and start again (if it will work).

Is the developer aware that students use this? The textbooks are already expensive enough, but using them with a reader that is abysmal in user-friendliness is problematic. You can not swipe to the next page, you have to scroll all the way down to the bottom to go to the next page. And with longer texts you have to be careful that you actually get everything displayed because the pdf is so long. Do better! Students use this. If you have no way of addressing issues like gestic or proper display of the material. Fire your developer and find people who know what they are doing.

The search either doesn’t work or relies on signals to and from the old Voyager spacecraft because searching for 3 words takes at least 10 minutes (that’s when I gave up). If your class has open-note exams, then this app will screw you if you’re stuck on an answer. And it’s not a device issue — plenty of free space and a fast processor. Everything else works great, which leaves this app as the problem. ETA: discovered today that it doesn’t work without an internet connection — regardless of whether you’ve downloaded your book to the device or not. So what’s the point of having the download option???

This app is newly developed as they didn’t have one last year, but I would recommend buying your books on chegg if you want an easy experience using textbooks. They have a fit to screen option, but books are not optimized for mobile screens, causing awkward zooming needs. (Update: will be fixed soon, we’ll see how it goes. This is my main qualm with the app) The highlight feature also lacks, highlighting without giving a chance to edit your highlight and the highlight options box covering the whole screen. Slow download times, slow response, etc.

I would give this a zero star if I could. I seriously hate the app! Worst reading app! Studying from their website does NOT make the experience better at all. It’s difficult to highlight and take notes, and it has very, very limited features. I highly prefer using another reading app like Pearson+ or Kindle for school textbooks. Next time, I’m going to opt out from my school’s Inclusive Access program through Red Shelf because this is an abysmal experience! I wish I was able to do this earlier. I’d rather obtain my textbooks and study elsewhere than have to deal with this very horrendous app for a whole semester! Lesson learned.

This is one of the worst apps i have ever used. One of my online textbooks started using this app. The app did not link with the third party. When i went to get customer service, they were impossible to reach. I am still waiting a non-automated reply from emails i sent 3 weeks ago. All they send you is an automated email directing you to a self-help site. They expect you to navigate your way through this complex labyrinth of all the things that could go wrong. If that is not a sign of how flawed this company is. My recommendation is to pay more for a site you already know. This one is just a waste of money.

The number of times I have not been able to access my textbook due to errors is frustrating. I regret buying an ebook through WestAcademic that ended up using RedShelf to actually read the book. Once again - I type this review as - I cannot access the textbook and there is no information on how long it will take before it’s fixed. I highly recommend buying the book if your only ebook option is through RedShelf. I have used Kindle, VitalSource, Casebook Connect for my law textbooks- and none of them are perfect - but at least you can access the books.