SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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 In case this method is no longer valid or if you purchased a book using a gift card, the credit is added to your Microsoft account and you can then spend it in the Microsoft Store.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: 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.