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Microsoft Kills Off Its Book Store, Offers Refunds to Everyone
Microsoft has decided to discontinue the books category in the Microsoft Store, with customers no longer allowed to purchase new content since April 2.
Furthermore, the software giant says that all books would be removed in July 2019, and users would be offered refunds for their purchases.
"Starting April 2, 2019, the books category in Microsoft Store will be closing. Unfortunately, this means that starting July 2019 your ebooks will no longer be available to read, but you'll get a full refund for all book purchases," the company announces [Ed's note: blank without JS --FP].
"While you can no longer purchase or acquire additional books from the Microsoft Store, you can continue to read your books until July 2019 when refunds will be processed."
All refunds will be offered with the same payment method that you used to purchase books from the store, Microsoft says. In case this method is no longer valid or if you purchased a book using a gift card, the credit is added to your Microsoft account and you can then spend it in the Microsoft Store. [...]
Also at the BBC.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday April 04 2019, @06:57PM (6 children)
You will no longer be permitted to purchase a Chevrolet after 2019. All existing Chevrolets will be phased out of existence over the next three years. One by one, we plan to dissolve them using high-tech lasers from orbit. Please don't occupy your Chevrolet during the phase out.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday April 04 2019, @07:19PM
Otherwise known as the "Chevrolapture".
(Score: 3, Funny) by EvilSS on Thursday April 04 2019, @07:30PM (3 children)
Sign me up.
(Score: 3, Informative) by arulatas on Thursday April 04 2019, @08:20PM (2 children)
That you can only use to purchase more products that we carry.
----- 10 turns around
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 04 2019, @08:39PM
Carry for now.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Thursday April 04 2019, @11:02PM
(Score: 3, Funny) by legont on Friday April 05 2019, @04:17AM
No need for lasers. With Tesla, it's just a painless wireless upgrade.
But we fear not. Disappearance of private property was predicted long ago by Karl Marks. He also said that capitalists will do it themselves.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Alfred on Thursday April 04 2019, @07:07PM (18 children)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday April 04 2019, @07:09PM (12 children)
It probably helps that almost nobody has bought books from Microsoft.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday April 04 2019, @07:13PM (9 children)
I did not even know I could buy a book from Microsoft.
Well, not buy exactly.
(Score: 4, Touché) by bob_super on Thursday April 04 2019, @08:18PM (7 children)
Apparently, it turns out to have been "escrow some money while you have access to the books, and get all the money back after you're done" rather than "buy".
Which, in retrospect, is a pretty amazing deal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 04 2019, @09:57PM (3 children)
If only inflation weren't a thing ...
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday April 04 2019, @10:33PM (2 children)
In some jurisdictions, they will likely have to reimburse people with inflation (not sure whether they actually served any of those jurisdictions).
Otherwise, you lose inflation*price in exchange for a few years of access to the books, which is still a pretty amazing rental fee.
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Friday April 05 2019, @02:36AM (1 child)
Except that you'll get MS Store credit if you've switched banks or something. And that's nowhere near parity value with cash.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday April 05 2019, @04:21PM
True, but it's not exactly fair (and I'm talking about MS, here... argh) to blame them for the worst-case option, which is a logical choice and leads them to give you twice as much "value" for your money (unless you can unread the books).
The best-case is better than most retailers usually provide.
Stop making me say nice things about MS, would you ?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday April 05 2019, @02:34AM
Not exactly. An escrow means the money are use/disbursed on very specific purposes (established in the beginning), the entity that holds the escrow can not use the money for anything else.
In this case, MS could use the money for whatever purposes it wanted, as long as it provided access to the "bought" books.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by sonamchauhan on Friday April 05 2019, @11:50AM
"after *we're* done"
(Score: 2) by J_Darnley on Friday April 05 2019, @12:45PM
Except if you are in these categories:
Microsoft will keep it in that case:
In other words "fuck you, its ours now".
(Score: 2) by driverless on Friday April 05 2019, @02:00AM
You can't. You can only rent them, same as any other DRMd content.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 04 2019, @07:31PM (1 child)
Easy now - one of those six Microsoft book readers is a millenial incel with an AR-15. You don't want to trigger him - errr - her - it?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday April 04 2019, @08:03PM
Your manuka k-factor is high, but I know the truth.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Thursday April 04 2019, @07:31PM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday April 05 2019, @10:57AM (2 children)
Baen Books seems to be doing ok with a DRM-free model, (even though Jim died a few years ago :( RIP Jim, we miss you. ).
They also do a lot of free books (mostly old books, first in a series, and new authors trying to attract readers) and depend on the fact that people who read a lot are honest and intelligent enough to support the authors they like.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Friday April 05 2019, @05:31PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Saturday April 06 2019, @05:45AM
No idea, but I would guess not many. If the NYT has a SF list I think they would hit that occasionally.
It's complicated though. Authors who are good enough and popular enough to hit the NYT list are also popular enough to ignore any possible damage from DRM. If you are going to sell half a million hardcopy and a million kindle copies, then the DRM won't hurt you. Those readers who are adamantly opposed to DRM but still want to read it will either buy a hardcopy (new or 2nd hand) or pirate it. The authors who DRM hurts are those that might be good but aren't well known enough to make it worth the trouble.
E-books change the landscape. The problem is that many publishers and readers* are still in the hardcopy mindset.
With hardcopy, it probably costs about $10,000 to set up a short print run (including editing, typesetting etc.) but the incremental cost to print and bind each book is about a dollar. Setup costs also change depending on the expected run, you set up very differently for a run of 5000 vs a run of 500,000. The publisher needs to make a guess as to how many they will sell, and target their production and marketing to that.
With e-books, the set-up cost is almost as much (this surprises most people), but the incremental cost is zero. Once you have the book, you need to maximise the price/demand point.
-------
*On a personal level, I have paid as much as $6 for an e-book and that is about my limit. Most e-books I won't pay more than a dollar or two. I have paid over $20 for some paperbacks I really wanted. I work in the printing industry and I know the true costs on both products and I still irrationally value the hardcopy so much higher, when the difference should be about a dollar.
I won't buy anything with DRM, mostly for ideological reasons, but also because I run linux and have a kobo, and it's too much of a pain.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 05 2019, @06:13AM
Don't buy DRM garbage, it will bite you again and again. There are plenty of libre options available, including https://www.gutenberg.org/ [gutenberg.org]
(Score: 4, Funny) by krishnoid on Thursday April 04 2019, @07:23PM (1 child)
"We are shutting down our books category, but to improve literacy around the world, you can both finish reading your purchased books *and* get all your money back*"!
* Money refunded as Microsoft Fun Bucks, usable at Windows Phone stores everywhere
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 04 2019, @09:04PM
Can I use those Fun Bucks to buy a new battery for my Kin or some songs for my Zune?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday April 04 2019, @07:42PM
On the one hand its a dick move by MS to take take away peoples books.
On the other it is good that they are giving refunds, and actually refunding real money when they can is amazing.
I usually loath MS in all things but without RTFA it actually sounds like they are trying to do right by their customers.
I better get my bunker fully stocked, this has got to be a sign of the imminent start of The Apocalypse.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday April 04 2019, @07:43PM
.... Unlike Sony, who were smart enough to form an alliance with another ebook seller and transfer most purchases over to their platform and thereby avoid having to do cash refunds.
But Microsoft wouldn't want to give neither Barnes & Noble nor Amazon the trade. (Or, who knows, maybe they asked and were told no.)
This sig for rent.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Thursday April 04 2019, @07:47PM (4 children)
If someone can take away your ability to read something you paid for, then it is not a book. A BOOK is made of paper with printed words that will not magically disappear because some dickhole decides to pull the plug.
When you buy DRMed documents, you are not buying "books". You are buying giant splintery puss oozing STD infested dicks shoved down your throat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 04 2019, @08:06PM
Mmmm! Got some mustard?
(Score: 4, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday April 04 2019, @08:51PM
We call it EBOOK. You've heard of EMAIL, right? You know, the mail that Crooked H erased? Well, EBOOK is like that. It comes with a big beautiful Erase Button. I'm not the biggest fan of modern digital. And I'm no fan of Jeff Bozo. But, I'm a big fan of the checks he sends me every month for EBOOK. For The America We Deserve, for Trump Never Give Up, for Midas Touch -- and many more. Winning!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 04 2019, @11:24PM (1 child)
I used to feel that way. I grew up with books being so much a part of my life, that not having that physical object in my hands seemed sacrilegious.
But when I started traveling much more for work, the advantages of an ebook in that situation became too much to ignore. So I got a reader and used it on my trips, some of which were weeks long, so having many books right at hand was really nice.
Gradually I came to realize that what I'd enjoyed all those years was not books, per se, but stories. I like reading stories. Ebooks, for me, work just fine. I don't need an actual book for its story storage capabilities anymore.
About 90% of what I read I will never read twice. Those get deleted as soon as I'm done reading them. The remainder get loaded into calibre via the decryption plug-in, so I can keep the now DRM-free copy as long as I wish. It also means I'm not locked in to any particular company's ebook reader, either.
I still have some physical books that I'll keep, some because they were gifts from friends, some because I do enjoy the feel of a nice leather-bound volume. I still like books, I just don't insist that everything I read come in that delivery format.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday April 06 2019, @11:26PM
I wish there was a practical way to convert my several thousand paper books into ebooks.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 04 2019, @08:34PM (1 child)
I didn't know they even had a book store. What was it called, "Reads for sure"?
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday April 04 2019, @08:55PM
I'm the world's most famous author. A huge fan of Microsoft. And I didn't know about it. I wish I'd known. I think if Microsoft carried my EBOOKS their cyber store would really have taken off. Microsoft is well known as the makers of the very best, most modern cyber. But so many times the Marketing is very lacking. Sorry Satya!!!!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 04 2019, @09:11PM
If you can't obtain permanent copies of whatever it is it peddles.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday April 04 2019, @09:44PM
We really need a virtual currency to pay for virtual goods.
So, payment can be cancelled at any time, for any reason, just like some businesses will.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by nishi.b on Thursday April 04 2019, @10:54PM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 05 2019, @09:57AM
jeez that is a depressing story
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 05 2019, @03:25PM
It's funny how many people discounted Stallman as crazy, but as times goes on and if you really think about it a lot of what he said is correct. This is just one more example.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday April 05 2019, @02:49PM
Government, please pay attention!
When you take away all the books, just be sure you refund us the purchase price!
You can afford to do this with increased taxes to pay for the program.
Thank you!
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.