NetGalley Shelf

App is overall buggy. If you navigate away from your book, it doesn’t remember what page you were on nor does it keep the book open, so you have to remember your own spot. It doesn’t always update from your Netgalley account, so books won’t show up even if you’re approved. Once you’ve opened a book, pages are slow to load and render, so turning pages takes a while. Just have a lot of patience while using it!

This app is the only way to listen to audiobooks from NetGalley (I highly prefer the Kindle app to read the ebooks from them instead) and like many others I find the lack of increments in listening speed a bit annoying (sometimes 1.5 is too slow and 1.75 too fast). Also, I have tried repeatedly to remove audiobook downloads and every time it tells me “fail to remove.” This is frustrating because then I can’t clear space on my phone. Some I don’t necessarily want to fully delete (even that sometimes won’t work) but it would be appreciated to have a way to do this (especially since it gives the option!)

I was expecting an app version of the website. I should start off by saying I feel like the website really amped up the app, encouraging me to download and use it as part of the netgalley experience- to enhance, or at least complement it. So I guess my low rating is due in part to my expectations not being met. The only feature the app has, what the whole app is, is your shelf. You can read the books on your shelf. That’s it. I guess it’s helpful to keep your ARCs separate from your other books, but I was hoping to be able to use the app to do what I can do on the website, but on the move without having to log in to the website on my phones browser. As for the e-reader portion of the app, (I guess I shouldn’t say portion since it’s the only thing the app is, though!) I find it hard to read with. I was glad to see you can change the font, with a good amount of options for reading settings and a lot of accessibility features (including a font for those with dyslexia- props for this!), but even playing around with the different settings I can’t figure out how to get it to look- not better, but easier (?) for me. It makes me sort of dizzy, no idea why. I’ll play around with the settings a bit more, the lighting seemed off (and you can change this, but again, can’t figure out how to get it to my liking for some reason). It allows you to bookmark, make notes, even listen to the book even if it’s not the audio version (I haven’t tried this yet so not sure what that’s like, but I appreciate this feature because for some reason kindle app doesn’t have this along with many other reader apps!). Anyway, I’ll probably just read my galleys on my kindle, and delete the app. Would love to be able to write my reviews here, request books, and access the other features of the website to help me utilize my galleys and enhance my experience on netgalley. I do really appreciate all the accessibility features, as I said, especially for those who have trouble reading on kindle app or other apps, they did great in that aspect. And if I wasn’t expecting more, I probably wouldn’t have been so let down and inclined to give a low rating. Again, website really hyped it up for no reason! I feel like it’ll just take up storage on my phone.