Remember last year when I told you about Microsoft getting into the eBook business and offering eBooks through the Windows store? Well, all I can say is ‘that didn’t last long.”
The company has announced that they are shutting down eBooks for good effective April 2. Not only are they no longer offering eBooks for sale, but they’re also killing the eReader functionality of Edge, so all of the books you downloaded from the Windows store will be going away. If it’s a free book, it’s just going to be gone for good. If you paid for the book, they will be offering a refund to your method of payment starting in July. If your original method of payment is no longer active, Microsoft will issue a credit to the Microsoft store. Your books will disappear in July of 2019. If you’ve made any types of annotations or notes to the books, those will be gone as well. Microsoft is offering a $25 store credit to customers who’ve lost annotations on top of their refunds.
In the past when other eBook sellers have closed down, they did allow readers to keep DRM free versions of their books to keep in their library. However, since the only place to read the Microsoft eBooks was the Edge browser, that really wasn’t going to work so well. One of the biggest drawbacks to Microsoft eBooks was that unlike Kindle or Nook books, you couldn’t just load an app on your phone or tablet to read them. You had to read them in the Edge browser. People tend to read eBooks on phones or tablets.
If you had books on pre-order, they order will be canceled and you won’t be charged.
Hard fail, Microsoft.