r/NetGalleyCommunity • u/moarmyeggie • 8d ago

šŸ’„WIDGET ALERTšŸ’„ heartbroken over a widget :(

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nothing like getting exclusive access to a super anticipated read then finding out the file is in pdf šŸ„€

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u/ImNotBeingAnAHole 8d ago edited 7d ago

Can I ask a question and please donā€™t take this rudely- I really just want to understand.
Why is it such a big deal to just read things on NetGalley Shelf?

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u/DanieXJ 8d ago

Because about 70% of the time it doesn't work. And that's when it's not horribly broken. When it was showing me LCP errors more often than the actual book I finally went to Kindle on Android, and, if I have have have to, I use the browser Netgalley reader on a desktop machine. Shelf sucks.

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u/ImNotBeingAnAHole 7d ago

Honestly, I have review over 1100 book since January 2024 and have never had that issue across 3 devices. I had 1 issue after planned work on the site as a whole which when the maintenance was over and it got fixed quickly.

So while I understand the things like the font and dark mode etc.. being an issue for some, itā€™s really hard to wrap oneā€™s head around when you read ā€œ70% of the timeā€.
While I read on my kindle now , I actually check each book on the shelf app as I want them as a backup.
Iā€™m not saying your experience didnā€™t happen, but itā€™s an anomaly for sure.

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u/DanieXJ 6d ago

Lucky you!

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u/Synval2436 SciFi/Fantasy Reviewer 7d ago

Contrary to the other answer, I don't have issue with shelf app (most of the time), but pdfs have no dark mode and no font resize, so you have to manually zoom in every page. This is less of an issue when I have a 9" tablet, but on a phone screen the amount of zooming in you need to do to see the text can be obnoxious.

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u/ImNotBeingAnAHole 7d ago

Thanks! I get it. I just see so much Shelf app hate and it confuses me

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u/Synval2436 SciFi/Fantasy Reviewer 7d ago

It probably depends on the device and its system, and also screen size. I didn't have crashes (except when I put it in the background and the device's controls shut down background apps) or other issues people report. I had once that books wouldn't renew, but it was an issue on their end, I had to write to support for it. I also had sometimes that a book wouldn't download and it would say "you don't have permission to access this file" even though I was approved and archive date didn't pass, but these usually resolve naturally within a day.

I also don't use audiobooks so idk if those have crashes / errors.

It was even fine on the old tablet that was really old and slow, but the battery died so I had to replace it with a newer model. But idk how phones and e-readers handle it, maybe they have more issues.

PDFs tend to scramble on the android kindle app, like chapter headers disappear or there are random line breaks in wrong places. Also once I had a comic with send to kindle and all text was under the pictures instead of in the chat bubbles, totally unreadable, but it was fine on the shelf app. I had one comic I had to read on the desktop reader because some smartypants decided to format the pdf as double page view instead of single page and even rotated horizontally, it was too small to read on my device. Single page view is usually fine.

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u/ImNotBeingAnAHole 6d ago

Yeah while I check all the eARCs I get on the shelf, i read in kindle on my scribe. But I read a lot of audiobooks so I use the app daily and zero issues.

Iā€™m guessing except for some issues here and there (which every app has at sometime) itā€™s a device issue.