Bookish (NetGalley) Settings: A Complete Guide for Beginners

You just got approved for an audiobook on NetGalley, and now you’re staring at a review deadline while juggling work, kids, and that never-ending commute. The good news? Bookish—NetGalley’s listening app—has settings that can turn those fragmented 15-minute drives into genuine reading progress. The better news? You don’t need a tech manual to figure it out. Here’s exactly what to adjust first, what to ignore, and how to make the app work around your schedule, not the other way around.

Why Your Default Bookish Settings Are Working Against You

When you first open Bookish, the app defaults to a standard playback experience. That’s fine for casual listeners, but if you’re the type who squeezes audiobooks into every spare minute, those defaults will cost you time and focus.

The most overlooked setting? Playback speed. NetGalley’s review copies often come with a narrator reading at a natural pace—typically around 150 words per minute. For a busy professional, that feels glacial. Bump it to 1.25x or 1.5x and you’ll reclaim roughly 20–30 minutes per hour of listening. That’s the difference between finishing a 10-hour audiobook in a week versus ten days.

The second default that trips up beginners is the sleep timer. It’s off by default, which means if you listen to unwind at night, you’ll wake up hours later with the book 40 minutes ahead and zero memory of what happened. Set it to 15 or 30 minutes before you close your eyes, and you’ll never lose your place again.

The Playback Speed Sweet Spot for Review Listening

Here’s where Bookish settings get personal. The right speed depends on why you’re listening.

If you’re reading for pleasure—a thriller, a romance, a memoir—1.25x preserves the narrator’s emotional pacing while shaving off noticeable time. Push to 1.5x and you’ll still catch everything, but you lose some of the dramatic pauses that make a great performance land.

If you’re reading for work or to prepare for an author interview, 1.5x to 2x is your zone. Your brain adapts within 15–20 minutes, and you’ll retain the key plot points and character arcs just fine. Listen to a sample of the narration first, though. Some narrators speak quickly naturally, and a 1.5x boost on top of that becomes incomprehensible. A slower, deliberate narrator like Steven Pacey (the First Law series) handles 1.75x beautifully, while a rapid-fire performer might max out at 1.25x.

The practical rule: if you’re rewinding more than twice per chapter, you’re too fast. Back it off one notch.

Managing Multiple Review Copies Without Losing Your Place

NetGalley reviewers often juggle three or four audiobooks simultaneously. Bookish handles this better than most apps, but only if you use the settings deliberately.

The app’s library view shows your current listening progress per title, but the real trick is the “Continue Listening” section on the home screen. It remembers exactly where you stopped in each book, even across different devices. If you switch between your phone on the commute and a tablet at home, make sure you’re signed into the same account and that sync is enabled in settings. Without that toggle on, you’ll manually hunt for your spot every single time—a massive time sink when you’re already pressed.

One habit that saves reviewers: use the bookmark feature liberally. When you hear a passage you want to quote in your review, tap the bookmark icon. Later, you can jump straight to those moments instead of scrubbing through chapters hunting for that one perfect line. For nonfiction and memoir reviews especially, this is the difference between a 20-minute review-writing session and a two-hour one.

Audio Quality vs. Data Usage: The Commuter’s Dilemma

If you download audiobooks for offline listening—which you absolutely should for subway commutes or spotty-signal zones—Bookish gives you a quality choice. High-quality audio sounds richer, but a 10-hour audiobook can eat 300–500 MB of storage. Standard quality cuts that roughly in half, and for most spoken-word content, the difference is barely audible, especially through earbuds in a noisy environment.

Here’s the decision rule: if you listen through premium headphones in a quiet room, choose high quality. If you’re on a bus, in a gym, or using standard earbuds, standard quality is indistinguishable and saves you storage for more review copies. You can also set the app to download only over Wi-Fi, which prevents surprise data overages mid-commute.

Setting Up Your Review Workflow Inside the App

Bookish isn’t just a playback tool—it’s where you’ll write and submit your NetGalley review. The settings here matter more than you’d think.

First, enable the “Notes” feature if you haven’t. While listening, you can jot quick thoughts that attach to specific timestamps. This is gold for reviewers because you don’t have to pause your momentum to remember what you thought at chapter three. You capture it in the moment, then synthesize everything later.

Second, check your notification settings. By default, Bookish may ping you about new titles or archive reminders. During a focused listening session, those interruptions break your flow. Turn off non-essential notifications while you’re actively reading, and batch-check them during your review-writing block instead.

Third, the app’s “Finished” workflow prompts you to rate and review immediately upon completion. If you’re not ready to write yet, that’s fine—you can dismiss the prompt and return later. But if you leave it too long, you’ll lose the emotional immediacy of just having finished. A quick trick: immediately after finishing, dictate a few voice notes or bullet points into your phone’s notes app. Future you will thank present you when it’s time to write the full review.

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Troubleshooting the Three Most Common Beginner Frustrations

The app won’t sync my progress between devices. This almost always comes down to the sync toggle being off, or you being signed into different accounts on each device. Check both before reinstalling anything.

The audiobook keeps stopping mid-chapter. This is usually a download issue. Delete the title and re-download it over Wi-Fi, then make sure you’re not running low on device storage. If it persists, check for app updates—NetGalley pushes fixes regularly.

I can’t find the review form. The review submission happens through the NetGalley website, not inside Bookish itself. Finish the audiobook, then go to your NetGalley shelf and click “Review” on the title. Bookish tracks your listening progress and marks the book as complete, which unlocks the review form on the main site.

Making Bookish Fit Your Life, Not the Other Way Around

The best setting on Bookish is the one you customize for your actual routine. If you listen during a 25-minute commute, set the sleep timer for 25 minutes and use the “auto-rewind” feature to pull back 30 seconds when you resume—you’ll never miss a beat from your distracted exit from the car. If you listen while doing dishes or folding laundry, keep the screen locked and rely on the lock-screen controls to skip or rewind without fumbling.

The key is to spend five minutes adjusting settings once, then forget about them. That’s the entire point of the app for a time-pressed multitasker: set it up so you never have to think about the mechanics again, and let the listening become the seamless part of your day. With the right speed, the right download quality, and your review workflow mapped out, you’ll clear your NetGalley shelf faster—and actually enjoy the books along the way.