The Palace Project Reviews

I had to download the same audiobook 6 times to listen to it from start to finish. It doesn’t remain downloaded until return date like other library applications. Every time I opened ThePalaceProject , the book had to redownload and would take FOREVER! It would get stuck at 4% for over a half hour. With or without wifi, it didn’t work.

Very frustrating to continually lose my place in the book. After losing the place, the two books I’ve listened to so far would not even play. I had to return the book and then try to get it again. Then it fails to download continuously.

ThePalaceProject is great if you want to choose a book but doesn’t work if you actually want to read one. It just keeps “verifying” without actually doing anything. My book club was told about ThePalaceProject last month. No one has been able to get past the verification stage, even though we all have Stanislaus County library cards.

ThePalaceProject drains iOS battery insanely fast—and my phone is only a year old. If I don't use ThePalaceProject, my battery is still around 80% when I go to bed. When I use ThePalaceProject, it's drained before 9pm. Please fix this issue!

Look at the most recent reviews. So many won and two stars.
Deservedly so.
Spinning wheel when it tries to download. Even with high speed broadband Internet.
When you pause where you are reading, it does not return you to that page when you pause ThePalaceProject . Instead, it starts the book all over again.
In 2023 they can't get an app this simple to work?

I did a specific search for audiobooks by author Alex Kava and there were probably hundreds of books returned. ONE showed Alex Kava with the rest having nothing to do with my actual specific search.
WHY?? Why have a search which provides so many non related results?

I did the same search using the LIBBY app and 7 results appeared, ALL for Alex Kava.

Maybe Palace should hire the programmer from Libby to fix their problem!!

Based on this horrible feature I will be deleting ThePalaceProject.

While there is a long list of libraries, this doesn’t support my library system

Doesn’t open to my book- have to go to the catalog & then to my books.

Have had to download multiple times so my place is lost.

Can’t get app on Kindle Fire.

I search for a title or author & the results seem to have NONE of those words! Felt like the “search results” were completely random! Didn’t appear to have an advanced search function either. I deleted ThePalaceProject . Hoopla is much better.

I have been trying for several days to download a couple audiobooks. On the library screen it tells me the audiobooks are downloaded and ready to listen to. But every time I click play it just says “downloading”. Very frustrating.

This all has a lot of potential but it has too many issues to warrant a good rating as of now. The interface is clunky and does not allow for an easy browsing experience. It has issues syncing with my libraries and constantly can’t load the library catalog. And perhaps the biggest flaw is not allowing audiobook playback when using other functions of ThePalaceProject . If I’m listening to something and want to browse for other things, search for something, etc, playback stops as soon as you navigate off the playback page. With some refinements and a better interface ThePalaceProject can improve greatly.

Edit: Unfortunately I had to downgrade to a 1 star rating. In addition to issues I already have, ThePalaceProject drains battery extremely fast and also brings my phone to very high temperatures. Also I have begun having issues with playback as the audio stops completely, randomly restarts a chapter, and loses it place altogether. ThePalaceProject needs a lot of work.

1. Bookmarks are broken: within any one book, every bookmark shows the same timestamp. I try to delete the bookmark, the same one reappears at the bottom of the list. Endlessly. Can’t delete. Can’t set a new one. 2. Chapter list: so nice that there is a list of chapters. Too bad clicking on any one of them does absolutely nothing. Does not advance to that chapter. Does not return to that chapter. Does actually ——-nothing. 3. I love my library. The building down the street. Too bad they got screwed when somebody convinced them to sign up for ThePalaceProject. Finally, doesn’t even play what is shown on the screen. I’m somewhere somewhere in the middle of the book: chapter 11, minutes:seconds, etc. showed on the screen. However, suddenly I’m listening to the introduction again. Fast-forward, rewind, doesn’t matter what I try to do, I’m stuck with the introduction again. I’m literally stuck rewound to the beginning of the book and cannot skip ahead to where I left off. Libby is good Hoopla is acceptable. Palace is nonfunctional

ThePalaceProject is garbage. Great idea, terrible execution. Books you’ve borrowed that show to be downloaded, then take years to download, if any progress is made at all. A book I’m trying to listen to has been at 0% for three days, and I’ve been connected to my super fast home Wi-Fi. Really terrible.

Loved the selections, but the player often freezes, or doesn’t pick back up from where I left off the last time. It’s incredibly hard to find your place again!

Some audiobooks never download properly and won’t play. Some audiobooks that have downloaded and start playing will suddenly fail to play on other days. This has happened so many times and it’s frustrating especially when I’ve waiting in queue for some of these titles. ThePalaceProject is simply unreliable at best.

I have had so many issues with ThePalaceProject. Books not downloading all the way and not being able to continue, app not updating, having to login and log out to get any updates, sometimes having to delete ThePalaceProject and reinstall only to lose my place in line over and over again. Also, my library doesn’t have enough subscriptions for the demand. I am constantly running into road blocks - giving myself a list of 20 books and having to wait in a long line for all of them. Very frustrating especially since I’m an avid audiobook user and I was hoping this could supplement my audible subscription.

My library moved to ThePalaceProject and it's very dissapointing. You cannot sample an audiobook to hear the narration before borrowing or reserving. You cannot review the catalogue while listening to a book. And the most disappointing, you can only change the speed in 0.25 increments. If 1.0 is too slow or fast, changing to 1.25 will be too fast and 0.75 will be too slow. You might as well have no options. Please fix this at least.

ThePalaceProject have a few issues, first of all if you are listening to a book and you have to do something else and forget to bookmark it then you are lost because ThePalaceProject won’t take you to where you left reading, second of all, everything I want to go back to bookmarks ThePalaceProject crashes, then the bookmarks won’t open at all, if it was not for these issues ThePalaceProject would be perfect! I love that there is so many books available

We are mainly using ThePalaceProject for my soon to be first grader and it is difficult to find books for her age group without having to sift through novels for middle schoolers. Early readers should have their own section or filter. Libby does a better job at this. The picture books are also all one page off in landscape mode. The start of a spread will begin on the right side and it’s pair is on the next spread when swiped. Please fix this.

I’ve enjoyed lots of audiobooks on ThePalaceProject, but there are two issues that prevent it getting five stars. The biggest is that it chews up my battery when using ThePalaceProject , as other reviewers have said. The phone heats up and my battery goes from 100% to almost 0% in no time. The second issue is the constant repeat of the first few lines at the beginning of each chapter. If they could could only fix these two issues, it would be a five star app.

ThePalaceProject keeps sending me back to the beginning of the chapter I’m on even when I don’t press a button. ThePalaceProject is a little weird because it will split a book into let’s say 182 chapters when the book only has 56. This Makes it confusing to find places in the book. Other than that ThePalaceProject is great and I use it a lot. All of the problems I mentioned may be because of my very old phone but if it’s not, I would love to see it fixed.

Leaving a review as it looks like the CS team is pretty responsive. I really like the interface to search for books, which lets you drill down by genre and subgenre but also allows you to View All. Much better than Libby in the ease of use there. I wish there was a “save for later” type functionality - maybe someday. :)

Where things fall apart for me is the audiobook playback. Biggest issue is that it heats up my phone and absolutely chews through my battery - doing nothing but listening (through Bluetooth headphones, connected to my home wifi) for the ~90 minutes drained my battery (iPhone 11, 75% performance per Settings) from ~75% to ~30%. Another quibble is that when moving from one track to the next, it seems to play the new track for 15-90 seconds and then jump back to the beginning. That’s a little weird and kind of annoying, but not a dealbreaker for me like the battery issue.

Haven’t used this yet to borrow a book but I notice two things in browsing for books.

1. A ‘save for later’ option would be helpful.

2. The ability to preview readers for the audio books would be quite nice. I don’t want to use one of my ‘borrows’ only to find that the reader’s voice grates on my nerves or puts me to sleep.

Thank you.

iPhone 11. Phone gets really hot when listening to audio books.

Why? Weird.

Love ThePalaceProject ! And the recent bug fixes. I would live it even more if it had a button to put books I’d like to read for later? Or a button where it would tell me the books I’ve read, if I wanted to reread them. Anyways, thank you for ThePalaceProject and books, I’d forgotten how much I love reading and listening to stories

The browsing experience is fantastic compared to Libby. It’s easy to find things and navigate around. Great job on that!

The only thing is, I love to read on my kindle and it is not yet supported. The good news is I can browse and borrow on Palace, then head to Libby to push it to my kindle.

Thank you for taking the care in the browsing experience. It’s a much needed improvement to the digital public library experience.

If you browse, you can see limited filter options (available vs own, popular vs everything) and ThePalaceProject offers genre and subgenres for browsing. I would love to have an option to filter by language.

I like the way ThePalaceProject looks, and it is simple to navigate, however, I’ve had some dealbreaker issues with it, specifically with audiobooks. I’ve seen at least one other review that had things I experienced, including overheating phone, and fast battery drainage (which are probably related to each other). i’ve also experienced it starting a chapter and then 30 to 40 seconds in it’ll skip back to the beginning. Another issue that has been very frustrating, and to me the biggest dealbreaker, is that it downloaded an audiobook and broke it into an insane amount of chapters. It was the third Game of Thrones book, which is a nearly 50 hour audiobook, and it broke it into 844 small sections which were titled chapters. It makes it very time-consuming and frustrating to find a spot if you lose your place. Also, it caused the downloading of it to take a long time, I don’t have the technical knowledge as to why, but took like an hour. It also froze while downloading and I deleted and re-installed ThePalaceProject and still had the same issue with download time. I hope they can fix this stuff, but I saw that somebody else had a battery drainage problem from like a year before this, so not sure how common it is.

long tale with many. twists and turns.Interesting

It’s free and gives me access to more books so I’ll love it forever BUT it often loses track of where I left off in a book and starts back up again on the wrong spot. So make sure to take note of where you leave off and you should be ok

Love ThePalaceProject , was able to find what I needed. Hope to be able to transfer the books into my kindle like Libby.

This is incredible. So so so much better than Libby! I was able to borrow an old favorite “ Jane Eyre” in a nano second and it’s sitting there waiting for me to start reading. I loved reading about the origin of The Palace Project and think it’s simply a masterful description of a library. I have loved the library since I learned to read ! Little did I realize that I had achieved nobility by just entering its doors. Bravo!

Love the fact I can get all my library ebooks in one place, and the books are all available. The indie Author titles in Palace bookshelf are super interesting too and can’t find elsewhere.

Be safe on my drive

Dark mode is supported. There is a distinction between ThePalaceProject interface and what you see when you are reading a book. With the help of the developer, Jill, I was able to switch back-and-forth both ThePalaceProject and/or the book to either a white background with black text or a black background with white text. Thanks, Jill.

Beautifully written historical novel.

Very much but not a

I used ThePalaceProject with much ease.
Its searches are more thorough than others and easier to navigate.

I’m so happy you found

Good luck to the rest

We will

I’m so happy you found it

I really like ThePalaceProject! It’s so simple to use and easy to find books from my library. I am finding books that I didn’t even know the library had when I was using Libby! I luv exploring my libraries “shelves” in ThePalaceProject , it is such an elegant design. I have yet to wait for a book to become available for there is always something great to borrow and read when I want to! I like the night mode too. I can’t believe this a library app!