Library: buying and reading books online
The screen where the school’s books are sold, read and downloaded.
The library is the school’s bookshelf, on your phone. It holds the books for your level and the general school library, and it is the only place where you can buy a book without leaving home. Open it from Library in the sidebar.
Each book arrives as a card with its cover, its author, its format, the course it belongs to, and a small badge that tells you where you stand: Free, a price such as 7 500 XAF, or Purchased once it is already yours. Search by title, author or course, open a book, and read it on the same screen.
Two of those books are for sale rather than free. Buying one takes a minute, takes effect straight away, and the book never has to be fetched from a shelf again.
Get a book in four steps
From searching to reading, on a phone if need be.
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Step 1
Open Library and search
Tap the search box at the top and type a title, an author or a course name. The list narrows as you type; clear the box to see everything again.
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Step 2
Read the badge on the card
Free costs nothing, Purchased means it is already yours, and a price in XAF means it must be bought before it opens.
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Step 3
Open or buy
Tap Open to read a free or purchased book. On a book for sale, tap Buy now and pay on the checkout page; you come straight back here.
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Step 4
Read it or take it with you
The book text appears on the page. Under it, Download / Read saves the file to your phone or computer for offline reading.
Free books and books behind a paywall
Why the same screen behaves two different ways.
Free books open straight away
A book marked Free belongs to the school and carries no price. Open it and the pages appear immediately. This is the normal case for revision sheets, summaries and material the teacher put up for a class.
Books for sale hold their pages back
A book with a price — say 7 500 XAF — can be opened, but its pages stay hidden behind an amber panel until you have paid. The cover, the title, the author and the description stay visible on purpose, so you can check you are buying the right book before spending anything.
Paying is not a subscription. One payment, one book, yours for good. There is no renewal, no monthly fee attached to a book, and nothing that stops working after a while.
What the paywall does not hide
You are never asked to pay blind. The price sits on the card in the list, the same price sits on the book’s own page, and the download button only appears once the book is yours. If a book you paid for still shows the amber panel, reload the page — the purchase is confirmed the moment the payment goes through.
Finding the books you already bought
Your purchases stay on the account, on every device you sign in from.
Look for the Purchased badge
A book you have bought is never hidden and never taken down. It stays in the same list, in the same alphabetical order, and its card simply reads Purchased instead of showing a price or a Buy now button. Open it and you land on the same page as before, with the download button waiting.
Search is faster than scrolling
Once your account holds a few dozen books, search beats scrolling. Type the first two or three letters of the title and the list drops down to a handful of cards. Because the search also looks at the course a book belongs to, typing the name of a lesson can bring back every book that supports it.
Downloading before you leave
Download / Read saves the book to your device. On a phone, download it on the home Wi-Fi before travelling and open the file in any reader app — this is worth doing for the books you need in a lesson with no connection.
Some books are hosted elsewhere and open in a new tab instead of downloading. That is normal: the button on the page takes you straight to the copy, and a link sent to yourself from that page works for the rest of the term.
Where to go next
The pages that sit either side of a book.
Library questions
Asked by students buying their first book online.
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I paid for a book but I still cannot read it. Why?
Reload the book’s page. The purchase is confirmed as soon as the payment is accepted, but the page you are looking at may have been opened before that happened. If the amber panel is still there afterwards, check that you are signed in with the same email address you paid with, and then contact the school office with the reference of your payment.
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How do I get a book back that I bought last year?
Search for its title in the library. The book is still listed and still marked Purchased, so it opens on the same page as before with the download button available. Purchases stay on your account — there is no need to buy the same book twice.
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Can I read a book without spending data?
Yes, and it is worth setting up before you travel. Open the book and use Download / Read to save the file to your device while you are on home Wi-Fi. The saved copy opens in any reader app and needs nothing from the internet afterwards.
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A book on my booklist is not in the library. Can I still get it?
You can, but not through the library. The library only holds what the school has chosen to stock online, and a class list often names titles from several publishers. Take the title, the author and the publisher from the booklist to your usual bookshop — the list is the school’s official requirement either way.