RedShelfReviews 87

Start with a good idea then ruin it! As a college student being productive is important. You would think that this software product would function as a real book or at least as competing products, wrong! In most cases this product will only allow you to "read" not copy parts of a book for school assignments. Thats right, after I purchased my books, come to find out I couldn't copy the pertinent text for assignments! Those that do allow you to copy cap it at 10%. Do yourself a favor and buy Kindle version and be done, at least Kindle allows you to copy, highlight, bookmark and you keep it in a format that is separate from the school's online programs. If you have to just go buy the physical copy of the book. As a capitalist I would cheer if this product ceased to exist.

I couldn't log in with the accurate email & password then couldn't get any help logging in, they said they would email me the NEXT DAY then didn't. Now I am waiting for a refund from Follett customer support I don't know how many days this will take now or if I will get the refund. They completely wasted my time in the middle of me needing to complete assignments.

Misleading Vendor
I was excited that my college bookstore was offering what was promised to be lifetime ownership of an ebook of a textbook. As someone who uses only ebooks, I was shocked at the lack of transparency of what I was actually getting.

1) You only 'own' the book as long as you maintain an account and provide your personal information to RedShelf. This is not ownership - it is limited, restricted access with conditions.
2) Downloadable only means that you can access the book through the cache of your browser. You cannot change devices without deleting it from one device and redownloading it onto another. This is very inconvenient for those that use multiple devices.
3) You cannot copy and paste into Word or flashcard programs to create notes
4) The reader only offers low quality mechanical style of voices...nothing natural sounding.
5) You cannot use the text with assistive software which is a violation of human rights.

The company's response was one of refusing to acknowledge their limitations and outright false claims that I was refunded all of my money. I was only refunded part of my costs.

I've never hoped for a company to go out of business more than I have for RedShelf. It's by far the worst program I have ever used. I regret the day that I spent my hard-earned money on their product and kept them afloat for a minute longer.

Please, if you're considering using this product or purchasing a book that uses this e-reader, take a minute to evaluate your life and whether you want to remain happy. It was my understanding that torture is largely illegal across the world, but RedShelf must have found a loophole to subject thousands of students to this cruel and unusual punishment.

The e-reader just doesn't function half the time - whether it be "printing" or constantly logging you out, telling you you're "offline" with a banner in the most inconvenient space on the screen, and general uselessness of features such as highlighting. And even when it does function, it's laggy and hard to read. This is all independent, though, of the worst feature by far: page limits for saving offline and printing.

I understand that the reason for these page limits is publisher-imposed anti-piracy limits. But it's so frustrating (10% limit on pages and an intentionally difficult interface to actually print them) that it actively pushes me away from buying from publishers who use RedShelf and implement anti-piracy measures. If buying a book were easy and pleasurable with a good interface, I would gladly spend my money in the future on their products. But now, having made the mistake of buying a book through RedShelf, I will consider every other possible alternative before I do it again. This includes the piracy that the publishers are trying to prevent.

Please do not buy from this company so it can die a horrible death sooner.

I cannot even get to the book. It rejects my login. When I request a change of password, their website tells me my entry and its retype are different (they are identical) so will not allow me to change it. Their website says that if you are having problems you should use their RedShelf Solve page. That page does absolutely nothing. RedShelf is a company whose days are numbered. Their product is extremely restrictive even when it works and now it does not work at all. Such incompetence! Die already and let us get our e-books elsewhere

Studying process indeed got more effective for me with this service. It's awesome that you can get into any field you are interested in and start cognizing it.
I mean, you can easily find unfamiliar words, you can find definitions, highlight interesting moments in the text and so on.
Plus there is a possibility to listen to the text, change the office and the pace, it's all about convenience and it's silly to deny this fact.
Maybe, there is not a very big range of books, but anyway.

My ebook worked great the first half of the semester, but I lost access to it after that. Redshelf was no help, and despite numerous emails, I still don't have my book back. My grade has suffered as a result, and they aren't even helping me get a refund. Save yourself and your grades, get your book somewhere else.

It's just a convenient place for students.
And I guess not only for them, because you simply insert the book's title or some keywords and it offers you a very broad range of books and you will definitely find osmething you are looking for.
Other than that, as I am fond of audiobooks, this service comes in handy in this regard too. You can have your text voiced aloud after selcting needed pieces. So, no troubles in understanding what they are doing whatsoever! Props!

This garbage company seems only set on making as much money as possible from college students, which isn't something too crazy to think on. Textbooks in general are massively inflated in prices anyways. For reference, I am INDEED a college student currently getting two degrees.

But here's the main issues:
1. These morons couldn't even manage to create an actually useful manner to browse 'online' textbooks with their trash proprietary viewer. The search function takes forever to actually search, and can't even combine words to search for phrases, so enjoy getting 50 mentions of a common word in your phrase like 'the'.

2. They only allow copy-pasting up to a certain percentage of the book, which isn't necessarily an issue but is stupid since you HAVE to copy/paste in their own proprietary(stupid) way. I myself found a way around this garbage, so search for yourself how to circumvent this if you're forced to use this trash.

3. You CAN'T ACCESS THIS $#*! OFFLINE. (At least, in a way that isn't needlessly restrictive.)

These people behind this company are easily one of the main reasons why people move to pirate textbooks, beyond physical textbook prices. Search for your.pdfs before you decide to give these scam-artists your money, please. They certainly don't deserve profits for such lazy implementation, one couldn't imagine it's too difficult to copy-paste a textbook.pdf from the publisher(LMAO).

I'm not sure how anyone who needs an audio reader can stand how RedShelf works. The way it pronounces words that are hyphenated is comical. There is no natural fluctuation in the voice.
Also for fun, when printing to PDF if there is an error it will take a percentage off the amount you can print even though it didn't print properly. Sometimes the highlight doesn't follow the speed of the reading.
Online textbooks are supposed to be cheaper than the paper versions were 20 years ago and that is not the case anymore due to greedy companies. At least with the paper version we could sell back. Use some of your profits to do better and not just pay your executives.

I spent almost as much as I would have spent on a print edition (~$200), but with this: 1) I can't copy text; 2) I can't download chapters; 3) I can't view the content offline without downloading some app that I couldn't get to work anyway.

Hey guys - I paid you $200 for a book. Why do I have to continually log in to see it? Why can't I save it to my hard drive so I can access it offline?

RedShelf is a nickel/dime operation - I expect better from an academic-oriented organization. At least a print book I could have re-sold. I won't give these people another penny.

Redshelf seems to have decided to unnecessarily complexify the smooth experience that reading on a PDF offers. To go from page to page, you need to click on a small right/left arrow at the bottom of your screen instead of just scrolling down. The browsing bar is horizontal which makes scrolling using a regular mouse impossible. I bought a book for academical purposes and I had to forget using it during an exam as the browsing is painful and extremely slow. I have to mention that I am working on a computer and that the experience is probably better on a kindle style device. The book I bought only allows printing 10% of the total content to a PDF which is basically useless.The experience was overall nothing less than frustrating.

When you are buying your textbook you are presented with the Orwellian options where you have to choose whether or not you want to be able to copy text from the book. I am just trying to work on a project and copy text to be able to properly cite something and of course you are blocked from copying it, why would you want your pdf to be functional or anything anyway? These textbook companies are all leeches

It's awful to navigate. It was so hard to get to the next chapter, add a highlight, bookmark, look up words and just load the page. It's almost completely unusable. Would not recommend.

A next to useless web application. Note taking, highlighting, flashcards, search, and downloading for offline are all non-functional features. Top that all off with unnecessarily long loads times to turn a page of text, and you've got yourself a properly miserable reading experience. A big pdf document is infinitely more useful. Red Shelf is merely an effective way to implement a pay wall to texts.

I got this as a law student who prefers textbooks. I was disappointed that I had to use Redshelf with a westlaw ebook purchase. I'm writing this review because I can't access my book during class and it keeps freezing when I try to highlight. This is the worst ebook app I've ever used. It basically only lets you look at the text instead of utilizing the helpful augmenting tools that are the whole reason for using an e-casebook.

They are quick to respond, have excellent customer service, and are so friendly and professional! I really appreciate the help and will definitely be using them again.

It stores a temporary file in cache in ONE device so if you need it elsewhere you must first delete that copy which wipes ALL books from cache. It's a ridiculous setup. You cant easily go from laptop to phone, etc. and forget it if your first device is elsewhere and you can't erase it to add it to the new device. The need to allow REAL download of books you bought and own. Not on cache where you can easily wipe it out and all your other 15 books from this semester. For professional careers (law, medicine, engineering, etc.) where you study for years to take a state board you need easily 50 books to review and this place just doesn't allow for that access. Big disappointment.