Bookshop.org: Read/Buy Ebooks

I went to open the app this morning to read a book I had started. I got nothing but a white page. (This is on a new iPad.) I closed and reopened the app several times with the same result. I went to the App Store to open it that way and found there was an upgrade. It would not allow me to open the app without upgrading, so I did. Now I can no longer place/remove bookmarks or adjust the font size. I touch the place to do that, it briefly appears then closes before I can take any action, changing pages in the process. Please fix this ASAP as the app is unusable without these features. I also still want a built-in dictionary. If there is one, it doesn’t work. Also, when I go to my library, I just see blue rectangles, no covers, no titles. How am I supposed to open a book I can’t see? Turning on WiFi doesn’t help. They’re still just blue rectangles instead of book covers. I’m going back to the Kindle. That’s the best book app, even though the company is loathsome. Update: nothing has been fixed and it is getting worse. If I turn my iPad off, after turning it back 9n again, I have to reconnect to WiFi to reopen my book. I don’t always have access to WiFi so this is totally unacceptable. I cannot buy any more books here unless this is fixed.

I love the mission of this org to provide ebooks that support local independent bookstores. Thank you to the visionary founders and developers! I’ve just bumped this up from 4 stars to 5. When I first started using the app a few months ago, the highlighting was clunky and buggy, very frustrating. But in two updates over the past month or two, that’s been massively improved and now works as it should. There’s still room for improvement in some issues that are mostly cosmetic, relating to page layout, but it’s clear the developers are hard at work on delivering a good user experience. Know that your efforts are seen and appreciated! (If you’re looking at many of the reviews, pay attention to the dates. Because new updates keep coming, many of the problems mentioned in older reviews have already been fixed.)

After using for a while the one thing that continues to annoy me is the **arrow at bottom left of page to proceed to the next chapter.** It gets in the way of the letters in the last line of text. I would rather the continuous scrolling just continue between chapters. Other suggestions for improvement: 1) allow for orientation lock for those of us who read in bed, especially as it seems to wildly lose my place if it switches from horizontal to vertical. 2) improve the ability to find last place read to either when switching between devices or when you accidentally tap the screen causing it to jump to some kind of crazy place. My work around has been to highlight a few words periodically and whenever I leave off so I can find my place again if it jumps to some mystery spot. I later go back and delete superfluous highlights. 3) partner with library systems so they can buy from you also and I can use your app for library ebooks. 4) find a way for readers to share a purchased book with a short list of friends like we used to do in the good old days with “real” books. This is the one huge downside to digital media and makes me reluctant to pay full price for books if I’m the only one who gets to read them.