Axis 360 Reviews

I do love Axis360 because I read so fast and I’m traveling a lot so I can’t always make it to the library. So it’s very helpful for people who read fast and read a lot dave trips to the library. (I do prefer reading from an actual book but it’s so nice to have it on my phone for reasons like 1)reading when you have unexpected downtown 2)not having to carry large amounts of books on trips). It’s also nice because if I finish a book too fast and I won’t be able to go to the library for a few days or a week I can just hop on WiFi and return it and get more books!
HOWEVER, Axis360 has MAJOR glitches. Sometimes whole pages just don’t exist so you miss parts of the story. In one book a whole chapter was just nonexistent. I had to figure out what happened through context clues and from reading a chapter summary online. So that stinks. Also I will have perfect WiFi AND will have downloaded the book and it still gives me the spinny wheel. In addition, the search mode on Axis360 is so so bad. They will have the book but you have to type it in exactly how they want it for it to pop up. You can type in the author and sometimes nothing pops up, or sometimes you ha to type in the author for the book to pop up and the title doesn’t work. So if you want to find new books just use the internet, and then search on Axis360 for the book you want. If Axis360 had no glitches, this would be my favorite app of all time!

Definitely not a fan of Axis360. I’ve had it for a few weeks now and have primarily used it for audiobooks. I’ve only used it once for an ebook because Axis360 was so horrible it ruined the book for me. The pages would not turn and when they did, it was often back a page or two or even to the beginning of the chapter. There was no rhyme or reason to which page I would end up on. No page numbers were even given, so it was nearly impossible to figure out where I left off. I made it to the beginning of chapter 4 of the book before giving up completely because I was so frustrated with the whole experience. As for the audiobooks, when they actually work, they work okay. Good luck getting them to work, though. It takes ages for them to download and even when they’re downloaded, pauses happen like they’re buffering. What is the point of completely downloading the audiobook to your phone if it’s just going to buffer? And when that happens, it never restarts on its own. I have to restart the whole app and hope I remember roughly where I was in the story because Axis360 sure doesn’t know. Searching for a title through Axis360 is pointless. Even having the exact title of a book won’t always give you the right title, despite my library system owning the rights to it. I can find it on the website itself, but searching through Axis360 is a nightmare. Why my library system uses this, I will never understand. It’s downright awful.

I was so excited! I had just gotten a library card for the Johnson County (KS) Library System and would be able to check out thousands of ebooks! I got Axis360 installed and logged into and found a book I wanted. Then I tried to download it. It seemed to freeze up. I tried again it wasn’t responding at all. Then I got an error message that asked me to send a report of the error. Tapped that button and nothing. Had to force Axis360 to quit. Finally got the book. Now I am having a hard time getting the pages to turn. With kindle I can just easily swipe, not so here. Usually have to tap it at least three times. This should not be so hard. Then in the middle of the night I woke up and couldn’t sleep so I decided to read. I couldn’t get Axis360 to open. It said something about unable to connect to server (I think). I uninstalled and reinstalled Axis360 then it was giving me errors and not letting me even log in. Once I finally got back in I had to redownload the book and then it opened to the wrong page. Seriously disappointed. The other library I use uses Libby which I can just download books into my kindle app. The kindle app is much more reliable. I have never had these kind of issues with it. Also it would be nice if this we’re compatible with good read. That way it would automatically mark books I am reading or have finished. I am hopeful that at least the bugs will get worked out.

Why did you feel like you had to make IOS version look the same as web-based version? The this app app from a couple of years ago was much better. (It seems to coincide with the timing of Follett buying Baker-Taylor. Could it be that Follett wants Axis360 to fail to discourage ppl from using B-T libraries?) I serve on selection committee for our school library’s e-library. The ability for our special needs students to use speech-to-text while seeing the print version of the book was what tipped the scale in favor of Baker-Taylor. That feature no longer works. In addition, the text size option is more limited than the old this app and any other reading app I’ve used. You can’t set the book down and come back to it a couple hours later without having to sign back into Axis 360. This also means they must also find their library first. All these changes makes using this app app too cumbersome for many of our students. I now use our public library’s Overdrive library and the Libby app most of the time. I only use this app and Baker-Taylor when I want a book that I know I selected for our Baker-Taylor library and Overdrive doesn’t have it. It is pretty sad that I can’t recommend our own library. I have even recommended to our selection committee that we cut our losses and discontinue purchasing new books and find a new e-library provider.

I used to love Axis360, despite its occasional shoddy downloading and syncopations. It was just a small issue and I could still read my books properly. Now they have this new update where the layout is all different and I really hate it. Maybe it’s just on the phone, but now going to your book is a whole process and takes a long time to load with a stark white screen with a rotating green circle. And when it’s done it doesn’t even show the book. Before it used to be really easy to change the font size, but right now those new “updates” have the fonts ridiculously large that only fit about 10 word on the screen which makes it difficult to read and are preventing me from changing them. They claim the new updates are “fixing” the bugs but now it’s so glitchy. When you try to zoom out the screen behind the pages are a bright garish yellow. When you turn the pages you never know which end of the stick you’re gonna get. Either it immediately changes to the next page and you think somethings wrong, or you wait for about 5 seconds while staring at a white screen with a roaring green circle. The menu is now really difficult to pull up too, you used to be able to pull it up with a tap of your screen but now it never responds. Overall I am extremely disappointed with the new updates, and I would really prefer it if they changed it back to how it was.

I loved reading books using Axis 360 and read between 3 and 5 per week. Notice the past tense. I loved the ability to change fonts and font sizes, the comfortable amount of “white space” around each page in two-page view, and the simulated page flip. All of those, but especially the last two, made for easy reading in deep or skim modes.

This latest update totally ruined the experience. I can live without changing fonts. Although it was quite a nice approximation of a real book to use the simulated page flip, I could get over it. However, what I cannot get over is the tiny amount of “white space” around and between pages. The text is crammed into tightly and extends so far to the edges that one’s eyes are constantly fatigued. No adjustment will fix this atrocity. It has completely destroyed the experience and I see no way to roll back to a saner and more comfortable version. Blah!!

Update: Months later and the hits keep coming, regardless of the book or device or operating system being used. Pages won’t advance without adjusting font size up or down. Next page won’t load until Axis360 is closed and reopened. Server access errors occur often, even with a downloaded book that was literally just being read and when there should be no server access. I could go on and on but nobody is listening. GO BACK TO THE WORKING VERSION BEFORE SOMEBODY DECIDED TO MODERNIZE—THE EXPERIMENT HAS FAILED!

It’s a really great app, especially for audiobooks. I really enjoy the speed feature in the audiobook so that I can finish the books quicker. I love how easy it is to use and find books to read. Bored and want to read, but don’t have a book? Use Axis 360. Don’t have access to a library? Use Axis 360. In the middle of 5 books and want to keep them organized? You guessed it, get Axis360. You’re even able to use this on a computer — so it’s great for if you don’t have a phone or mobile device. I mainly listen to audiobooks, but when I have text to read things get a little glitchy. The only reason I don’t have the whole five stars is because when you are reading a book, the pages can get mixed up. If you don’t bookmark your stopping point, you have to look around and try to find where you left off. Other than that, audiobooks work well and there are not other problems. I wish it would let me checkout more than 10 books at once though because I am such a book lover. But yeah, that’s all I have to say, go download it!

It works well enough but has some glitchy stuff like SearchCONSTANT SYNCING PROBLEMS AT THE END OF A CHAPTER ON A DOWNLOADED EBOOK. I’VE CHECKED AND THERE ISN’T AN UPDATE AVAILABLE FOR Axis360 AND I’M RUNNING IOS 13.3. SOFT RESET FIXES PROBLEM HALF OF THE TIME. IF YOU CLOSE Axis360 , WAIT A LONG WHILE, AND TRY AGAIN LATER,IT WILL BEGIN TO WORK AGAIN. NEVER EXPERIENCED THE PROBLEM WITH AUDIO BOOKS. Search"CONSTANT SYNCING PROBLEMS AT THE END OF A CHAPTER ON A DOWNLOADED EBOOK. I’VE CHECKED AND THERE ISN’T AN UPDATE AVAILABLE FOR Axis360 AND I’M RUNNING IOS 13.3. SOFT RESET FIXES PROBLEM HALF OF THE TIME." nytime you bounce to another app, when you go back to this app it times out. You have to wait a few seconds for it refresh to the home screen then you must touch 'my stuff' and then choose your book from your checked out tab. Then you can resume reading or listening. Another wonky thing is the thumbnail images on your stuff . Every book on your checked out, holds, or wish list tabs will display the thumbnail of the book you are currently reading or were reading last. A lot if not most other items listed will display no thumbnail image at all. Big problem with this is the icon displaying whether it is an E book or audio book is on the thumbnail so there is no way to know. With limited exception the audio books play great and with no exception the ebooks display perfectly.

Axis360 was never great, but it is free, and gives access to public library content, so I hold it to different standards.
However, version 4.0.2 on iPad is miserable. Sometimes, the status bar at the top of the screen (which reads Book and Close) disappears. Now how do you close the book? Tap wildly until you discover the place in the top left where a tap brings up the “Main Menu”, which has a Close Book item - which doesn’t work!
After forcing Axis360 to quit, the status bar reappears. But there’s still no guidance as to where to click for the menu, and its Close Book item still doesn’t work.
The page turning experience is a severe disappointment. Swiping doesn’t work, you have to tap on the extreme left or right of the page. There are no visual hints that this is possible until AFTER you’ve tapped in the right place. In normal use, it is easy to turn the page by accident, but hard to tell what direction it turned because there’s no page turn animation. So now it is difficult to turn pages, but easy to lose one’s place.
Axis360 now invites me to “stream” an ordinary book. Who does that? Now, every time I open a book which is on the device, there is a considerable delay until it opens. It used to be much faster.

Overall structure is about the same as other e-readers, but there are a few areas of improvement:
- When listening to audio books, and your phone screen is locked, it would be nice to have the option to rewind 30 second on the Lock Screen, instead of just play/pause, or skipping chapters. The 30 second rewind is only available in Axis360 while the phone is unlocked, which is not safe or convenient to access when driving.
- For several audio books, I have noticed that the chapters Axis360 show do not correspond with the chapters of the book. For example, during the last audiobook to which I listened, Axis360 was on Chapter 25, when the narrator was only on Chapter 8. Makes it difficult to find where to go, if you want to go back to a chapter to reference something.
- There seem to be occasional glitches in the audio portion of Axis360 . Sometimes if my audio book gets paused due to a text or call, when I try to start listening again, it has trouble loading, then jumps around. Then I have no idea where I am in the story or what may have been missed. And per my previous comment, I can’t even find the chapter, due to the discrepancy in that between Axis360 at the narrator.

There isn’t much to add that hasn’t been said in other reviews but I still feel like ranting so here it goes. I am able to get through a book using the service but it is so buggy it really ruins the experience. I can’t imagine how something could be so poorly put together. A few examples: when Axis360 is resumed after a while or goes out of memory I’ve seen the following happen seemingly at random 1) app does not reload and I have to force quit, 2) current book does not load and instead an error is shown with the only actionable step is to report the error and I have to force quit, 3) current book loads and flashes where I left off then immediately goes to the beginning of the chapter and I lose my place. The third case wouldn’t be so bad if I could easily get back to that page but it requires manually tapping a next button as many pages as I need or trying to swipe (which mostly drags vertically and only turns the page some of the time). Finally, if you don’t have orientation lock on, if you go to landscape mode (likely by mistake) it sometimes only renders half a page and here’s the kicker, when you reorient it goes back to the beginning of the chapter. Seriously one of the worst apps I’ve had the displeasure of using.

Here’s an update. The latest update added text to speech. That’s great but it won’t turn the page! Seriously?!? And now the text doesn’t get as large as it used to. Meaning I have no chance to read it without my glasses. Cmon tram this app. Get it right!

If I could give zero stars I would. Was a big fan of the Blio app. Books had text to speech capability on iOS. This meant I could listen to my book on a long drive and pick it up when I was done and just read it. New app has no such functionality. On top of that page turning in Axis360 is extremely painful. Sometimes a page won’t turn. And the book just gets stuck. You actually have to move to the next chapter then go back and be prepared because when you get back to the glitchy page you’re stuck again. When you download an audiobook sometimes it starts back up in the wrong place. Sometimes it gets stuck and you have to hit the next chapter button never knowing if you missed something. Where’s the quality control? Who tested Axis360 to make sure it worked before releasing it? Does anybody actually read these reviews and try to improve the product? I sincerely hope that the library system didn’t spend a fortune on Axis360 because it still needs a ton of work.

My library switched to Axis360 on 6/1/18. The search feature is not as smooth as the previous app. The same books are not offered in Axis360 as the previous app. Frequent Axis360 syncs back to the beginning of the chapter not the page I was reading. This is the most frustrating because I waste so much time searching for where I left off. I wish my library would switch back to Axis360 they previously used. Axis 360 is taking the joy from my e reading experience.

Update: I have given several responses to d o you like Axis360. I wish our library would switch back to the overdrive app. 360 loses my place in the book every time I reopen it. It takes me back to the first page of the chapter. It frequently gets stuck and won’t turn the page. I have to remember my page number, adjust the font size then try to reload my page. Sometimes this takes several attempts. Sometimes I have to just skip to the next page and miss some content to continue reading. I use the Apple version of Axis360. My mother has stopped using Axis360 on her non Apple product because it is just to much effort. She frequently had to reload her book because it would respond. This is the worst reading app. Wish our library would use a different app.

The developers need to open Axis360 in multiple devices. The search feature is horrible. Im hoping its just on the iPad, but i doubt it. Going through my stuff is frustrating because it makes you constantly start from the checked out list, even when “back” should take you back to your wish list. The “read more” link is covered in other links and words so 9 times out of 10 when you try to get a longer synopsis, it takes you to an incorrect link. There can be issues with downloading a book. When it doesn’t finish downloading, it can give you an error with something like you have already downloaded this book. Nothing is more frustrating than when you wait for 4 months on a waiting list for this book and then cant download it because of a glitch. I have used a ton of other book reader apps and this one is the one that’s connected to my library, but Axis360 needs quite a few updates. Please fix it. This could be a fantastic app if you just tweak it a little bit and work out all the bugs. Just use it and when you have to take more 5 extras steps more than usual to get somewhere, fix it.

I truly love Axis360 because I read a lot and it enables me to do so in all kinds of situations and have lots of books going at the same time.
One big suggestion for improvement - I often read at night while holding a nursing baby and change the text to white and background to black - with phone brightness turned down this is a good way to read without distracting the baby or exposing my eyes to light. BUT - in the latest update to Axis360 a white bar was added at the bottom of the page - it is distractingly bright and I end up trying to read while covering it with my fingers. Please change the black reading screen to all black.
In addition, it would be great if there were both forward and back arrows on both sides of the screen so that I could forward the page more easily while holding the phone one handed. Forward on both sides at top, backward both sides at bottom, for example.

Since the latest over haul I have had nothing but issues on all of the different devices in our house. It cuts off randomly in the audio books every few minutes and doesn’t save where it quit. When reading it does a similar thing of funkiness and doesn’t save, difficult to move around in the book, change font (almost to the largest size on the slide bar and it is half the size I had for a mis to high font size before) and other things and even more issues on my kids older devices. Very frustrating to go from some that worked well most of the time to not working most of the time. You all have some fixing to do.

Lasers issue; I can’t get books to open. I have been using Axis360 for a while and since the big re-write sometime in the last year, have had nothing but problems. The latest is I checkout a book, it claims it downloaded, then I get an error message stating that it can’t find the license for the book. Asks to send a message, I have no idea if the message is sent. Then to get back into the program, I have to shut down Axis360 completely and remove from my history to get out of my app then reload in. Frustrating

Your latest update has resulted in a terrible almost unusable app. Bookmarks don't stay. You also cant bookmark the first page of a new chapter (which is often where you leave off) because Axis360 thinks that is a blank page. It takes way too long to open a book that has already been downloaded each time you go into it as it searches for an internet connection (which should not be needed to access previously downloaded material). The buttons are all too close together so when you go to add a bookmark you get a change in font size. This unwanted change in font size them takes you to a different spot in the book then where you were. If you turn your device even slightly Axis360 reorients and takes you to a spot in the book several pages away from where you were. Clicking on items in the table of contents either don't work at all or take you nowhere near the start of that chapter or section. Please improve Axis360 or at least go back to the old version.

App continues to crash and get stuck on a page. Very tired of getting 50 pages into a book and having to abandon because Axis360 wont turn the page. Your product is terrible and unusable.

Honestly since I have downloaded Axis360 it is completely Junk. I am so glad that the library has an app opportunity but I am extraordinarily disappointed in it the poor quality. I love listening to audiobooks. I think I have pretty low expectations of what should happen with an audiobook. It should play. It should play every time I hit play. It should play when it’s been downloading. It should continue to play until I personally hit stop. This is not the case with Axis360. Ever since I have downloaded it it is been plagued with issues. I have had to delete Axis360 and re-upload Axis360 and then find on my books again that were deleted because I deleted Axis360 . This is very disappointing app. I know that book apps can work much better than this because I also am a member of Audible. On Audible I download the book I play the book I listen to the book and I move on from the book. With this appI might be able to download the book I might be able to listen to the book and more than likely not. In the past week I have tried to download A number of books and I was able to listen to one. I hope the developers are Reading this and work to improve their app. We’re kind of at their mercy.

I read a lot and love being able to rent eBooks for free (saves money and space on my devices). Axis360 has tons of books to choose from. I use a few apps like this through my local library and this one, by far, has the biggest variety. Even better, I once sent in a request for a book they didn’t have, expecting the message to be nothing but a glimmer in the great cyber beyond, but, wildly, a couple weeks later the title I requested magically appeared on my “Recommended for you” list. Great!

That being said, Axis360 has its problems. Some books don’t adjust to screen size so the last few words of every line sometimes get truncated. Sometimes images end up overlaid over the text. Sometimes the text comes in vertically on a few odd pages. You get the idea. Weird glitches just happen here and there.

Overall though, I’m happy to put up with those minor problems in exchange for the numerous other benefits.

I love Axis360 , but there are several things I would improve. First off, why are there only five books able to be checked out? That seems like a small number for book-lovers. And when I returned a book that I’d finished, it kept the same number of books as when I first checked it out. That may make sense to some, but it doesn’t make sense to me. Second, I don’t know if these next two issues are only for my phone, but for each book I start, the chapters pause at the end of each chapter near the beginning. Lastly, Axis360 glitches repeatedly. It will freeze up at completely inappropriate times, like when I’m browsing for new novels , sometimes it will stop and I have to go to Settings to fix something. I really think these things should be fixed and if they are , I would give it a five star review. Otherwise, I love Axis360 and can’t get enough of it.

I really love the ability to check out ebooks and audio books, although the selection is somewhat limited. The plus side is that I don’t have to worry about being late in returning a title. Axis360 isn’t as intuitive as I believe it could be when searching for titles or authors. A slight misspelling will get you zero results. I rated it a 4 because of the convenience and it’s ability to sync whatever I’m reading to my other devices. But there’s room for improvement.

Update. Although, I haven’t seen any improvements in the search area. I would like to add that I have found that that an e-book selection usually doesn’t include the whole series! It have found that it usually has the end of the series or even a middle book, but not typically the first one. This is frustrating to say the least.

I am so mad that my library switched to Axis360 for books. I have had more than one book that I check out and download, only to discover that the only thing available to view is the cover page. I have tried to remove the book and redownload, but does not work. I have even returned and checked out the books again, but that does not work either. What is particularly frustrating is to be on a waiting list for a book for weeks, only for this issue to arise.

Now I am having issues with an audiobook. My kids and I have been listening to a kids book while on a car trip. At one point the book did not move to the next chapter, but just abruptly stopped. I hit play, only to discover that we were no longer at the same place. I couldn’t remember what chapter we were on, and wasn’t about to search while driving, so we had to wait to restart the book. We did start it back up and listened to it successfully for that day’s drive. But when I went to start it a couple days later for our return trip it will not load. It just spins and tells me it is loading, and eventually Axis360 closes. I tried removing and redownloading the book. Nope. So I am now facing a long car trip without the book to help keep my kids quiet and entertained. Thanks, Axis 360 for the hellish car trip I am now facing.

I previously gave Axis360 4 stars since I’d been happily using it for a year or so, but now that I am getting used to the new upgrade, I am giving it 2 stars. It is still my main e-book reader, however the biggest annoyance is the fact that when I read a book on my iPhone during the day when I open that same book on my iPad at night, the bookmarks do not transfer despite having Internet connection and both book versions simultaneously open on iPad and iPhone. Also, if I try to change the color of the text or font size, the reader suddenly moves forward several pages. I also no longer get to swipe to turn a page. I’ve found that I’m reading less in Axis 360 because of these annoyances.

Previous review when I was still hopeful about the new upgrade:
I love this platform and am using it for all my library e-books — I never bother with Kindle or Overdrive, etc. anymore. Yes, the recent upgrade is awkward and taking some getting used to, but I’m sure I’ll be fine. I love browsing for new books in Axis360 ; its already connected to my library account so I don’t need to check out books from the library’s website. Overall, great app, thank you for making it!

I love the idea of an app that I can access audiobooks through my library for free. This is especially important to me because I’m visually impaired and cannot read books any other way. Unfortunately Access 360 has a lot of glitches that I must contend with if I want to use Axis360 . I don’t know if it’s because I use my accessibility features on my phone and that messes up the interface but there are so many glitches it’s frustrating. I think the apps that have features like audiobooks that specifically cater to visually impaired or blind people need to make sure that that kind of interface is flawless. The two main glitches that are the most frustrating are when I go to the chapters feature it kicks me off Axis360 and most of the audio books that I have checked out I often can’t finish reading because it will just stop playing at a certain point in the book and then I can’t skip ahead in the chapters because of the other glitch. I would happily write Axis360 much higher if these little glitches or fixed!

I’ve had the axis 360 app for quite awhile. Having access to audiobooks and ebooks in the palm of my hand is great. Unfortunately the dreaded is severely limited. The page rarely swipes when you want to go to the next page, most of the time it reads the swipe as a tap and pulls up the in book menu. Also if you exit the program with the book open and don’t go back to the my stuff page the next time you open the book I doesn’t go to where you were reading, but rather where you were the last time you opened the book from the my stuff page. This is super frustrating after 30 minutes of reading to have to try and flip through 40 e pages with a book that doesn’t swipe through most of the time.

I wish it had a continuous scroll function or a turn the page with the volume buttons function, that would make the inconvenience of not saving your stopping point a little more tolerable.

Use Axis360 to check out your books, but then download them to your device and use a better reader.

I'm really upset that my library switched from Overdrive to Axis360. I listen to a lot of audio books while I work, but I don't get good cell service at my desk. With Overdrive, this wasn't a problem. I would just download my book at home, open Axis360 at work, and listen with no problems. With Axis360, however, it has to load several times before I'm able to listen to my downloaded book.

Then there's the problem with freezing. When I pause my book then try to play it again a few minutes later, it freezes. There's no spinning loading wheel; it just freezes. I have to them close Axis360 , reopen it, and wait while it loads several times until I can listen again. I can't tell you how frustrating this is.

I don't have an issue with any other part of Axis360 . I actually think it has a superior search method as compared to Overdrive. All of the issues lie with actually listening to the audio books I download. If they can fix that, I wouldn't be so annoyed about the switch off apps.

Well, I waited awhile to write a review to see how Axis360 worked under various conditions and now I can’t get it to work at all so I’ll write the review. This thing really only works well once, in my experience. The first book I got the librarian helped me set up and check out the book. Worked great! Then I checked out another book and put myself on a wait list for a 3rd, all from my phone. I’d used e-readers before and everything I was used to seemed to be there. When I didn’t finish my second book on time I tried to check it out again — no wait, but Axis360 couldn’t handle it. Crashed repeatedly until I deleted it and reinstalled it, then it found my new check out and synced right up to where I had left off. But now it doesn’t work consistently and gives all sorts of false errors. Deleting and reinstalling isn’t fixing it this time and the library look up doesn’t work smoothly and is a giant pain every time I try to reinstall. The whole experience has become miserable.

I used to like Axis360. I could download library books and the reading experience was somewhat similar to using the Kindle app on my iPad. It’s never worked as smoothly as Kindle but it was decent.
Since the new update, several things have changed that I really hate. One, the max font size is much smaller than it used to be. I need reading glasses for regular books. One reason I read on my iPad is that I can be comfy in bed and increase the font size to the point I don’t have to wear reading glasses. The max font size now is small enough that it is a strain for me to read without glasses. This is a major fail in my opinion.
Also, it is difficult to get Axis360 to switch from portrait to landscape mode. This used to be simpler. Page turning is clunky now and I often have to swipe several times or make sure I’m right on the page turn arrow. I should be able to gently swipe any place on the page and have the page turn effortlessly.
Short story: if this wasn’t the only app my library uses, I would have deleted by now.