Review Insights · Google Play
Bookshelf
Vital Source Technologies · 18,325 ratings · ★ 4.3
4.3
★★★★★
18,325 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 44 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"page"
7 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Pros: 1. It has the expected content in the app. Cons: 1. The publisher has the audacity to name it "bookshelf" with no branding, details, or other context clues making it difficult to find and easy to mistake for other apps. 2. They failed…" - Rachel Wallace
2
"book"
7 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Pros: 1. It has the expected content in the app. Cons: 1. The publisher has the audacity to name it "bookshelf" with no branding, details, or other context clues making it difficult to find and easy to mistake for other apps. 2. They failed…" - Rachel Wallace
3
"pages"
7 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Poor UX. Switching pages with the table of contents was inaccurate, fiddly and frustrating. Kept sending me to the wrong page and then back to the main library. Uninstalled." - M W00t
4
"other"
6 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Pros: 1. It has the expected content in the app. Cons: 1. The publisher has the audacity to name it "bookshelf" with no branding, details, or other context clues making it difficult to find and easy to mistake for other apps. 2. They failed…" - Rachel Wallace
5
"every"
6 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Pros: 1. It has the expected content in the app. Cons: 1. The publisher has the audacity to name it "bookshelf" with no branding, details, or other context clues making it difficult to find and easy to mistake for other apps. 2. They failed…" - Rachel Wallace
6
"books"
6 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Pros: 1. It has the expected content in the app. Cons: 1. The publisher has the audacity to name it "bookshelf" with no branding, details, or other context clues making it difficult to find and easy to mistake for other apps. 2. They failed…" - Rachel Wallace
7
"read"
6 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "despite being 106mb size it reads aloud fails. five second delays between sentences! Brutal" - donotfret
8
"reading"
5 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Syncing reading telemetry and usage analytics with Blackboard? Oof. Only downloaded this app to get away from the pitiful web interface, but am disappointed to see that usage activity is monitored and reported through my phone in absolutely…" - Lance Malusky
9
"crashing"
5 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Some of the features, like creating flashcards and notes are not user-friendly at all. Furthermore, if you have an Android device, you may not be able to access your eBook due to some error with WebView. VitalSource will not refund your pur…" - Dillan Yamanouchi
10
"work"
5 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "not working now that I had given 5 stars. taking it down to two stars until it starts to work better." - Kristi Parker
📋 All 44 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
Pros: 1. It has the expected content in the app. Cons: 1. The publisher has the audacity to name it "bookshelf" with no branding, details, or other context clues making it difficult to find and easy to mistake for other apps. 2. They failed to format the digital ebook versions so you can actually see the whole page. (Tried every setting.) 3. No table of contents or hot links between sections. 4. Painfully clunky mark-up and notes features. 5. It's just kinda ugly. 6. Tone deaf review responses.
Constant errors, can't remove books from the shelf, cluttered, bad UI all and all terrible app. Unfortunately, I am forced to use it.
This app is beyond frustrating. Highlighting is either impossible or mind bendingly clunky. My highlighter capacity has just disappeared and I can't find out how to get it back. Every time I take a break from the app I have to reconfigure most of the formatting. I thought Kindle was clunky and just tried to figure out if I could move my book to Kindle. The answer is it's possible to a type of Kindle I don't have.
the most user unfriendly e book app i have ever seen..hated every second of using the app - had no other option because only legitimate source of the book (Penman, financial valuation) was this messy app.
Syncing reading telemetry and usage analytics with Blackboard? Oof. Only downloaded this app to get away from the pitiful web interface, but am disappointed to see that usage activity is monitored and reported through my phone in absolutely any way imaginable. Make sure to block all permissions and disable background data usage.
Poor UX. Switching pages with the table of contents was inaccurate, fiddly and frustrating. Kept sending me to the wrong page and then back to the main library. Uninstalled.
Some of the features, like creating flashcards and notes are not user-friendly at all. Furthermore, if you have an Android device, you may not be able to access your eBook due to some error with WebView. VitalSource will not refund your purchase, even their app is constantly crashing and preventing you from accessing the eBook. I would strongly recommend using Kindle or some other platform.
Tells you to install the app to print pages yet the app has no print button
Took all of 5 minutes to hate it, cant scroll properly through pages, reading aloud feature has a robotic voice that's painful to follow. FAQs button inside the app leads to a webpage with a broken cookies button (simply would not f away). Thought I'd use this app to listen to my ISC2 textbook while commuting, fastest uninstall in a while.
Highlighting is ridiculously challenging compared to literally any other app I've ever used. The WORST Part is finding a specific key word or phrase. Usually Ctl F will find exactly what you type. This app does not do that. if I type "E-form," this app will search for, "form," or "E" in addition to what I typed. I can get over 200 results for a single search and only 1 or 2 of them will be related to what I want.
Functionality can be limited with formats it will open. Needs improvement on read aloud features which is getting used more and more by students: Improvements Required 1. It should be able to put together hyphenated words that are hyphenated due to the end of a sentence. 2. Know not to read every number on a table axis. 3. Not verbalise the chapter and page number every page. 4. Jumps around, doesn't follow that flow of the page 5. Have a toggle to control whether it reads references.
I can't open my bookshelf because it has a bug in it. I have books that I paid from the institution in my bookshelf. This only happened after it asked me about an update it needs to be fixed.
Please fix the crash!!! I LOVED this app..... at first..... but now, I can't even open it. I've uninstalled, reinstalled, all the things, with no luck! It's still crashing when I go to open the book.
Useless
It doesn't matter how many times I restart the app. It keeps crashing.
will not load a section of the textbook on the app that I need for class but I can view it online and the app keeps crashing
I was unable to give ZERO stars!!! There is an explicit no refund policy and they don't let you know that the content can only be accessed through their stupid app! The content is then only allowed to be used on 2 devices. The whole point of having an e-book is so that I may have accessibility on my terms and not tethered to any particular device/platform. I would have liked pay nearly $100 and be able to read this content on my e-reader. I BOUGHT this book and should have access w/o app.
Books freeze during loading when attempting to read offline.
Worked for a few hours after install, hasn't worked since. It can't open a book. Complete waste of time.
This app is still terrible. After finally being able to force it to download, it sucks. It can't keep track of page number choosing to skip every other, so pages 1 & 2 are both "Page 1". The highlighter highlights words randomly or won't highlight what you want at all. The system for scrolling or changing pages is a nightmare ESPECIALLY ON LAPTOP. This is all together a terribly put together excuse for a budget kindle. Thanks, college, for pushing this onto me 😑
I don't see a dark mode in the actual ebook reader part of the app. I want to help troubleshoot this further but the developer's email address doesn't work. Please update your contact details.
App is not linking favorites from the computer.
Book keep disappearing from my app. Best to just use laptop.
like a windows 97 reader. you CAN NOT use your stylus, select full lines to mark (just single words), draw or place the notes visible On the page. not really great if you're using for studying
Not a lot of options in this app. Can't enlarge font and no dark mode for the actual ebook. Yes there's dark mode for the app but no for the actual ebook.
garbage website. garbage prices. another company abusing the control of supply for essential textbooks for people trying to improve their lives. vital source sucks. avoid them when possible. honestly disgusting behavior. also let me download a pdf or at least let me zoom in, this is absolute dogwater.
Instructions are byzantine and useless. I've wasted time trying to fathom this. I'm going to recommend to Sage that they stop using this outfit.
trash app dose not work
So far I cannot access the book on my account. The app is just an interface of buttons that don't work.
the app literally crashes everything I even try to sign in.. wish I could write a review but apparently ill never get the chance to even use the app
UPDATE TO ADD: They're literally adding AI to the website before adding the ability to view the left/right pages simultaneously in case you're wondering where the needle falls on "student experience" vs. "AI hype." Why can you use a Two-Page view on your phone where they would be too small to see, but not on the website? Why don't TTS apps like Speechify work anymore?
Its description says that is for studying. I’d like to know how it’s possible to study without the option to use a digital pen while studying on a tablet
Read aloud sounds robotic on the app, web version only scrolls side to side
I don,t hear the audio .
despite being 106mb size it reads aloud fails. five second delays between sentences! Brutal
using this on tablet. every. single. second. there's a message about how the app has stopped responding even though i'm reading without problems. click wait. message comes back. click close app, reopen. message comes back. force quit app. message comes back!! this is maddening!!!
This app is painfully slow. even if I set the reading speed fast, there's often a pause of about 15 seconds between sentences. Ugh. Sometimes it goes on quickly to the next sentence, but please fix the speed so it's consistently fast.
I like a lot about it, but two issues. 1. It keeps crashing. 2. when I open, its not in the same place. Usually its back a few paragraphs.
so many bugs when I turn pages sometimes it goes onto the next chapter even though I have just started the previous one please fix!
not working now that I had given 5 stars. taking it down to two stars until it starts to work better.
it's so hard to read using this app. it should have an option to Read on mobile devices , like Adobe has
Cuts the letters on the sides of pages for some books on different pages off by using an overlay element thats the same color as the page background. Increasing the margin helps with some pages but my use of it with my books practice exams shows major problems, and the practice exams are arguably the most important part. Other than that it seems relatively easy to use and fast.
crashes all the time or won't load the books so you can read
In the 24th century, with all worlds utilizing AI technologies, this particular program does not incorporate them. As I have impaired vision, I prefer to listen to books, but the voice and reading quality in this program makes my ears to bleed.
Sentiment summary
82%
Positive (4-5★)
5%
Neutral (3★)
13%
Negative (1-2★)