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 In case this method is no longer valid or if you purchased a book using a gift card, the credit is added to your Microsoft account and you can then spend it in the Microsoft Store.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