Google Play Books & Audiobooks

The best reading app I've found by far, and I've tried quite a few. While I do pay for every book I read, compared to other apps, that charge per chapter, this app charges a minimal fee per book. For a few bucks I receive the entire book, add free. Also, the quality of books is much better and most I've read are complete stand alone stories. Prices run $3 - $10 per book with well known, best selling authors priced higher.

I was unsure about audio books at first, but the more I explore the app the more books I find to listen to, and finding out what narrators are better then some. I have found myself listening to more and more books now and absolutely love the fact that there are free books as well. some prices are high, but finding out that there are sales quiet often, and being able to find a series where the first book is free gives you a chance to see if you would want to listen to the rest of the series.

I love Google Books! I like the 'Shelves' that make it so much easier to find books. I don't use it as often as I should, and I hate to say this, because of Kindle. I think most readers have automatically gone to Kindle and it's easy to see why but we shouldn't overlook Apps like this as they have an excellent selection of books, particularly novels, and shelves to add them as you like. I would like to organise mine and eliminate most everything that isn't a novel.

Sat there for hours waiting for a book to release. Refreshed for hours and hours and hours. The book didn’t charge to my account even though I preordered it way back on announcement day. Your app doesn’t show the cost of a book or the purchase button on the books store page, for some reason you can only see it on a computer. For years I’ve been struggling with having to switch to a desktop to buy books. After hours and hours and hours trying to refresh to get to my book, I tried my computer and found out the books I preordered didn’t purchase and were sitting there waiting for me to buy again. I’ve been sitting here. Waiting. And your app didn’t even tell me that my order was cancelled AND I couldn’t see that the book was ready for me to buy because your app doesn’t tell you that. Im so unhappy that I’ve been sitting here crying in frustration and I can’t even bring myself to read this book I’ve been waiting on since 2011 now that it’s in my library. What a horrible experience. I don’t care why you don’t have the purchase button in the app and I don’t care why you didn't send me a notification that my preorder was cancelled or didn’t go through, this app is completely ruined for me. Used to be a proud user, now I’m hateful and frustrated and it’s ruined my experience for this book in particular.

I do most of my digital reading on this app on the iPad Pro. My one major concern is that why can’t I make purchases through this app? Every time I want to read a new book I have to leave this app, hop onto google, buy it there, and then go back to the google play book app. It would be nice if could just purchase from the app instead, and save me a trip! Also why can I only put a book mark on the right side only? I should be able to put a bookmark on the left side too. One time I put a bookmark and it appeared all they way in the right side, when in reality it should’ve been on the left side because that is where I actually stopped reading. Then, some time later, when I came back to pick up a where I left off in my book, I forgot that I wasn’t actually done with the left hand side, so I continued on reading only the right hand side. That whole page had a lot of detail, and I was lost in the book for a few seconds only to realize the error that this app has. I wasted like 10 minutes figuring out where I actually was.

As a reader app it does the job solidly! I can easily read any book I have purchased through Google however the browsing abilities of the app are severely lacking. I don't want to peruse articles as much as I want to look for more books I might find an interest in. When opening the app there is a decent "recommended for you" list but with no way to change or extend the list, search a new list or simply refresh the list without going through a "build your interests" type form. Obviously, I can browse on a desktop or laptop but that isn't as convenient as being able to do it from the same device I just finished reading from. It could also benefit from manipulating the screen timer. It's quite frustrating to constantly have to unlock the phone because the screen times itself out on every page.