RedShelfReviews 87

This is easily the WORST book reading platform that I have ever had the displeasure of using. It's unbelievably frustrating in every way possible. Pages take ages to load. The font on the pages is tiny, and when I try to zoom in, the screen freezes up and I have to back out of the app and come back in again. Sometimes, the page just won't come in to focus at all and I have to shut the entire system down to get it to load in properly. I have a new iPad with the latest iOS on it; I *should* be able to use my iPad as an e-reader and turn the screen to portrait mode to make it more like reading a book. Instead, I'm forced to keep it in landscape mode, only able to see less than half the page at a time, because portrait mode somehow cuts off the last word of most lines? What the hell is that about? It will randomly decide not to advance to the next page until I close the app and come back in. The table of contents will send me to the wrong page, if it will work at all. And, just to take my frustration level up another notch, it will auto log me out every 30 minutes or so, and I have to close everything and start all the way back over. It all sucks. I have used more profanity in the last 5 hours trying to get through the chapter on this textbook that I was required to buy online for a class than I have in the previous year! For anyone who is on the fence about purchasing a product from this company, let me help you out with a little advice: Don't! Pay more for a hard copy of you have to because you'll probably have to buy it later anyway... like me. PLUS: I just bought a NEW copy of the textbook for $47. My prof INSISTED the class purchase this unholy pile of s@#* for an online class for $60! I could have saved myself a ton of money, time, and frustration if I'd just purchased the physical book in the first place.

I would spend precious time carefully reading and highlighting my material... then all of a sudden, if I accidentally left-click the text somewhere... BAM! Just highlights the whole entire page without warning, and I would have start over CAREFULLY re-highlighting alll of my points, wasting my time over the already tremendous amount of time I spend reading for my densely-loaded class.
Also, the highlight tool sometimes doesn't work correctly, as seen with the attached picture.
Just wanted to take some time and express my utter frustration with how constantly this is happening. Thanks for wasting my valuable time. Can't believe I paid over $100 for this.

Firstly, Redshelf without your prior knowledge (because they fail to advertise it anywhere) is in USD. I am Canadian, so it is a significant price difference. I paid $85.75 instead of $59.30. That would be fine if that was reflected on their site, but they do not show or say USD anywhere, and then they just take the money from your account. The invoice even continues the fraud of it being in USD. Secondly, fine it's in USD but I checked conversion rates the day I bought the book and it should have only been $83. Therefore, the whole company reminds me of a scam. Furthermore, their support staff is unprofessional. Lastly, the actual textbook is pretty horrible. The reading aloud option is extremely grating. Additionally, it can only be accessed online rather than saving it as a download or a document. This makes highlighting the text very difficult without extremely high speed internet.

Ok so I already wrote a review after I first rented a book from Redshelf, but now it was gotten even worse and I can no longer even read the book.

Originally my complaint was that I paid 60 dollars (also wish it would have been clear that it was US and not canadian dollars before I purchased) for a book that I am renting and the features it braggs about - ability to highlight, make notes etc. all did not work properly and caused me more headache than anything else.

So I emailed Redshelf, a really nice service rep gave me a million things to try, spent an hour trying them all and nothing changed and now the guy wont get back to me.

Its frustrating because the new problem is this - I was in the middle of reading a huge chapter, got a few pages in and now the pages wont turn. Checked my internet connection, restarted my computer, cleared the cache, i tried everything. So I restart my computer and open my Redshelf book again, the page looks different so im hopeful, but nope, still cant access anything after page 25 of the book, only now... get this - all of the $#*!ty, half working notes and highlighting that i was able to make is now gone! Hours of work, gone.

LITERALLY HATE REDSHELF, I CANNOT BELIEVE MY SCHOOL MADE US USE IT. I WILL BE TELLING MY PROFESSORS AND SCHOOL BOARD ABOUT REDSHELF AND HOW IT FU%KS OVER STUDENTS.

At first, most would view this as perhaps another Kindle fashioned creation allowing one to use the book one has purchased as seen fit. Unfortunately, this is NOT the case at all.

Although they tout the ability to download your purchased book, you simply cannot. Failed attempt after failed attempt, I tried downloading one page, two pages, even front cover to back and to no avail. Customer service was no help in this area as they simply deemed it as an issue on my end even after I tried literally every browser known.

I tried in vain to simply copy and paste some text because after all, if I cannot download the book (although yet again, the author had given that permission) I could at least take the bits and pieces I needed for offline development. Nope, sorry. The overlords had also disabled that option and replaced it instead with an annoying color highlighting option that painted your entire page with whatever god awful highlight color available, informing you that the author had disabled the option of copy and paste.

So... let me get this straight. I paid for an online book to download and I cannot do that. I cannot print any of the pages, I cannot copy or paste any content and the interface is so slow, laggy and devastatingly resource intensive that it locks up my browser on a computer that cost over $3,000.00 to build and yet I am told it is "something on my end"?

Anybody remotely giving this "site" above one star is simply reading a book and not interfacing with the content as a student, instructor, programmer or experimenter would do with coded content. Had this book been offered through Amazon, I would of happily purchased it through that method rather than this obvious cash grab and user restriction.

Think about it. When you buy a book from a book store, does somebody stand over your shoulder telling you what you can and cannot do with your purchase? No. It is your book. Use it for toilet paper if need be, but in this case, the slow, lagging mess of restricted content of simply being able to view your book purchased at almost hardcover cost, implanted within a horrible interface lacking options, annoying pop up with highlighting, adding notes and bookmarks that work a quarter of the time, simply is not worth the price. Look elsewhere because customer service could care less no matter how many times you email them your issues.
Absolute scam!

I really wanted to use it, but Redshelf deleted 500 pages of my annotations without every notifying me. How could this happen if this company would be any serious with its customer base? I am not a student, I am a professorl and thought that maybe that's the way to go a little more paperless and a little cheaper for the students I teach. But after this horrible experience, take my warning: Don't bother with Redshelf, spend your money in better ways: If you value your time and your work, buy a real book or at least a different ebook.

This is what you cannot do in Redshelf. Please note - all of these things can be done in PDF.

Create flashcards: I need to be able to create flashcards to remember the information I read. Everyone does. Redshelf will create a flashcard but the flashcard window will not move out of the way. It opens over the actual text in the book that you need to see/select in order to add it to the flashcard. Since you can't move the window, you can't see the text to add it to the flashcard, so it's useless.

Since you cannot use the flashcards, you can try to copy the text. However, Redshelf says it copies it to the clipboard but when you open a Word document to paste it, it does not paste more than two or three words.

Since you can't create Flashcards and you can't copy/paste the important information you need to study later for a quiz, you have to print it. However, Redshelf only allows you to print 20% of the whole book and guess what? That doesn't work either. It does not print. In fact, Redshelf confirmed that the feature is "under construction."

So, how is one supposed to study for exams in the reading? (This is a graduate course so there is tons of reading.) Well, the only options are to literally have another computer open, and either type or manually transcribe by hand what you see in the book into a Word document or in a notepad That's it. I feel like I'm back in the 1980's taking manual notes in a college lecture. That's the only way I can prepare for an exam with this tool. I don't have time.

In regards to highlighting in Redshelf, if you highlight the wrong text and delete it, you can never highlight any part of it again. The mouse will "sit" on top of the text you want to highlight and do nothing.

Total crap.

This ebook platform is the worst I've ever used. I don't understand why it takes 5+ seconds to turn a page or load the sidebar or use the search function. It doesn't matter if you have a fast Internet connection, there will always be lag. The highlight tool is finicky and unpredictable. Last night, the site experienced an error, and I actually couldn't access the textbook to study for my midterm. Its shocking how slow and dated this platform is, and it makes it extremely frustrating to navigate through a textbook to do homework.

I am a professor teaching population genetics, and requested an "inspection copy" of a new book on Molecular Population Genetics. This would normally be provided free for an actual book if I called the editor associated with this area of science, because the publisher, Sinauer/Oxford University Press, know that I may implement the book as a required or recommended reading in my courses.

Instead, after my online application, OUP directed me to my free copy on RedShelf.com, but I was underwhelmed. I could not obtain a PDF copy (presumably in case I circulated it), and the text I did receive online was fuzzy and difficult to read. I searched for FST (a common parameter in population genetics, which is dealt with in the book), but the search engine failed to find it, even though it is treated as a major topic in the book. I tried highlighting the FST statements in the text and copying (Ctrl-C) to see if I could search for the formatting they use, but this didn't work either. Instead, RedShelf chose to colour the background to the FST text yellow (for some reason), but no copy was transmitted to the clipboard, so I could not paste it into the search engine.

Supposedly, by my license I am allowed to print out only 36 pages, but I've not tried; a clear printout would make the whole book readily readable. I suspect that the printnout would be very low quality, compared to the printed book.

With internet delays and slow response due to bloated software of RedShelf, this book is not readily readable at present in this format, in what they presented me as my "free copy."

In view of the unsuccessful search for FST, I searched for my own name, and found it once. But it's present at least twice in the actual text, I found. I suspect that the RedShelf strategy is to provide a very low resolution copy of the book, but instead of taking the original electronic text, they appear to have scanned the book at low resolution, and then attempted to recognize text in that low resolution version, and provide the low resolution version to subscribers. So there are errors.

Really, you can do better RedShelf! And OUP, you should just send me a PDF!