Microsoft is removing books from the Microsoft Store on Windows 10

I know that other companies do the same thing, hence why I do the same as you and only deal with DRM-free media (including buying physical books and the like.) However, I came close to buying a few books on the MS store and I'm now glad that I stopped myself from doing so.

But this has much greater impact. Although, OK, with Microsoft's localisations of their services it should not be that big.

I learned a lesson with Zune bought a complete series of Doug to find out u could only download it 5 times and then after that u could only stream it, when Zune went away I got no refund I was mad.
At least they jumped on Board with movies Everywhere which is a good thing I will buy movies at least if Movies Everywhere has the Movie it will show on all ur accts.

I feel exactly the same. I loved the Groove Music platform and was super disanointed with that rug was pulled from under us. From then on I decided that I will never invest in any Microsoft offerings on the store, Books, TV + Movies, because the same might happen.

But at least wit Movies and TV if u connect it to other Accts using Movies Everywhere and as long as they have the movie u buy from MSFT it will show on all ur other accts so ur safe buying them from the store, I have a VUDU acct, GOOGLE Moves, Amazon and I have almost all my purchases across my Accts accept the about 1 or 2 Movies Movies Everywhere didn't have but thats it.

Does that work for tv shows too? I’ve bought a bunch of them on the MSFT store and now I’m getting nervous

If you are talking about Movies Anywhere that's useless because it's US only.

I loved using Edge as my book reader but really hated not being able to add books obtained elsewhere to my library which was restricted to only books from Microsoft. Now I will have to find a third party book reader for my system and everyone I have tried in the past is lacking something or other. Sad news to hear they are discontinuing the integration when the new Edge comes out.

Given that Microsoft never had any real infrastructure (or really any sort of plan) for ebooks, I'm not surprised by this at all. I'd be more worried if they pulled movies since that's more integrated into the Xbox ecosystem, and conversely, Windows 10

With Movies Anywhere, I wouldn't be surprised to see Microsoft partner with another provider and then transfer licensing that isn't included with MoviesAnywhere. Then pull out of the Movie/TV business as well. There is no reason Microsoft needs to still be in the 'media' market. Back when they were creating codecs and streaming technology and nothing else was available, it made sense. These technologies are now established, which means Microsoft no longer has role to provide, and can contribute to existing projects. Most of the online services either used, have used, and/or currently use technologies which came from Microsoft. (Ironically, streaming to the iPhone/iPad wasn't possible outside of the limited QuickTime features until Microsoft provided the server infrastructure for Apps like Netflix and Hulu to work on iOS, and doubly ironic, it used the server media technologies of Zune on Azure. This always made me smile when an Apple user would criticize Microsoft or Zune, not realizing that every video they were watching outside of iTunes was being provided by Microsoft and Zune technologies.)

Actually, there is one reason for Microsoft to keep selling movies, and that is Xbox. That's probably the one thing that keeps it alive compared to music.

Movies Anywhere is US only, if they pull that crap they are shafting over 6 and a half billion people.

Makes sense. There are other places to buy books. Microsoft should focus on being getting those places into the app store.

There are other places to get apps and x86 software. So no need for the Microsoft Store at all?

No abundance of cheap well working windows tablets...
No ms books app on any mobile device... I wouldn't be surprised if pdf and pen support isn't going to the new browser.
Good job, Ms, good job.

Edge on Android...it has the book reader built in and works really well. I'm sad, because their eBook reader integration was done really well. Much better than Kindle on Windows 10.

That is exactly why I stopped buying movies and apps from Microsoft Store after the music pullout. They screwed us over too many times. They treat us as Guinea pigs and somehow still believe consumers will flock to them.

Microsoft cant pull out of movies and tv. Their biggest competitor in gaming, sony, sells tv and movies on playstation store. It would piss off the base and soby would have one leg up over MS. Plus microsoft makes decent amount of money from tv and movies since they been having it since the 360 days snd works on movies anywhere.

"Plus microsoft makes decent amount of money from tv and movies" Can you cite any references to back this claim up?

While I'll miss their bookstore, I don't consider myself getting screwed over since they're offering a full refund. That's actually just the opposite, because I've already read those books and any I want to keep I can buy elsewhere with my refund.

With movies you're safe because of xbox, so you can support microsoft there. And they have full refunds for the books anyway. Movies and tv has to many users. Refunding that would cost millions that's literally the only consumer thing from Microsoft that is safe apart from xbox and surface

You could read your books on iOS and Android through the Edge browser. Microsoft already had this system working on chromium.

Where?! Even if it is true, I'm curious to know how many people know this... Which is a MARKETING ISSUE

Wow!!! I just found it. I NEVER KNEW THAT WAS THERE SMH SMH SMH

While marketing prob could've helped I don't think that was the main issue. People usually use the default browser on their respective platform, Chrome for Android and safari for iOS. I don't think knowing about books would've gotten people to all of a sudden change their browser and most of the people who are reading ebooks are likely already entrenched in Amazon Kindles/apps.

What I just started buying books because the Books section in the Microsoft Store came to Canada and the rest of the world in Dec 2018.

Lol wow. Ms is all over the place when it comes to consumers. They should really build out a consumer focused business, department, or whatever that literally does nothing but package technology they already have and push to consumers

Haha, I am not the one reading ebooks, but "Books" have still not hit Swedens MS store.

yeah even then there are still a few countries that still don't have it. I think the other place they still don't have it is Brazil (which if you remember had a huge percentage of Windows Phone and Windows tablet users)

Most of Europe doesn't have it. And probably most of Africa and Asia too

'rest of the world' = Canada and a maybe two more

yeah it could just be the Commonwealth countries getting support back in Dec 2018

Books were never even available in the UK Store so we won't miss it

I just don't understand why people don't trust Microsoft to maintain their consumer services. It boggles the mind how cynical people are with this company.
:/

Lol! Really did laugh out loud

groove and ebooks was just a quick reaction from MS. Dont worry, Movies and tv will stay. I think Microsoft should of made a deal with a digital book store like walmart did. Building an ebook from scratch is a publishing nightmare. If ebooks do come back it will be through a partnership

But why should Microsoft sell ANY digital media? I want to CONSUME media...I don't care where I purchase it. As long as Microsoft continues to provide a platform where I can continue to consume books and music and TV and movies, what advantage is there to purchasing digital media directly from them? Others already provide digital media marketplaces that are MUCH better than what Microsoft has historically provided. As long as they continue to offer their marketplaces on Microsoft's PLATFORM, I'm happy.

There are projects, like this that were under way, with licensing deals even though Microsoft has been slowing moving in a different direction. It could be worse, they could be like Google and just shut things down, with no alternative and no refund of content. In just the past 5 years, Google has shutdown and cancelled over 25 major projects and products, and when Microsoft retires something that isn't being used, the world catches on fire. With Microsoft, in the last 5 years, there are only a few items mainly: Windows Phone, Band, MSN TV, Kinect, Music, and now Books. It is also weird that when Apple makes massive directional changes and leaves software and hardware behind, nobody seems to notice or care. Heck, even OS X doesn't work on their own computers that are over 6 years old. Weird, almost as if there are some contextual/personal biases.

Article wrong. Your can read books bought in the Microsoft Store in Android Edge app. This is exactly why I didn't use the books purchased feature. I was burned with Groove. So I'm not using MS ecosystem for content purchases beyond games and apps (what little there are).

After this, I can't even trust Microsoft with my movies and TV shows anymore. Whenever Microsoft tries their services are great but I can no longer go all-in with Microsoft because Microsoft won't go all-in. They're on the way to becoming the next IBM. Sure they'll be a massive powerhouse making loads of money, but no one will care because they might as well not exist for us. While Apple pushes harder into the consumer market with more subscription services, Microsoft gives up the fight before it even starts. It's like they don't realize you have to spend money to make money. That's a cardinal rule of investment. They want their music and book stores to survive? Spend the money to build out well-fleshed music and book apps on all platforms and actually build a decent infrastructure with aggressive pricing and feature tiers, and there's a very good chance you'd see a change. There's a ton of people who'd love to be able to get everything from a company that isn't Apple or Google.

Short answer: Yes. Long answer: The movie store is tied into Xbox and therefore has many times more people using it than ever did Groove or Books.

Groove was on Xbox too.

The existante of smartphone makes it more practical to play music than on an Xbox.

Also the number of XBox users is tiny compared to PC users. I'm not sure XBox users are enough to make a difference.

I use Groove on Xbox almost daily.

Movies and tv cant shut down. If sony still movies and tv. Microsoft will do the same. It would bad if their biggest gaming competitor offers sonething thst MS doesnt

Yea... Just like vr

Wouldn't it be more fair, if they just allowed downloading a readable pdf with name & email watermarked all over?

Until you realize how easy it is to remove that watermark. If this was the 90s, sure that would be hard to remove, today, not so much. Simple image processing script with a mask for the watermark and a couple of functions to fill back in pixels in text/images.

Groove dead
Books dead
Health dead Coming soon: movies and maps And while there at it why not kill the OneDrive photo integration in the photo app, just like you did with music Can't blame them though. I have an iPad that is my media hub for pictures, music streaming, netflix and eBooks. Windows is for work and gaming. Most people don't realise but Microsoft was always the Windows, Office and Server company. The enterainment services only started with Windows 8 and their phone efforts. Since that was rejected by the markt it makes little sense to keep those services and they are going back to their essence in the pre-Windows 8 days

No way Microsoft will shut down movies. Sony offers it. It would beca really bad marketing move.

Big publishers are not interested in sharing revenues with a platform vendor when they can push their own.
Instead Microsoft should open the Store to independent publishers and self-published books, providing the reader app but letting anyone publish an epub as easily as a game or app appx.
This would actually help new content becoming available. Basically they could provide their epub reader as a shared dependency, and let anyone with a Store account publish epub as easily as appx files.
If you think this is a good suggestion, I have a Feedback Hub entry about it : https://aka.ms/AA4pl64

Then why are big publishers all in on Kindle? Big publishers are not interested in irrelevant platforms but are very happy with relevant platforms.

Because they cannot provide their app for the Kindle, the only solution to provide content to Kindle owners is to go through Amazon. On the other hand, it's more profitable to build their own reading app for Windows to access their own store than to give Microsoft a share of every book sold and sharing their customers with other publishers. The real problem here is why didn't Microsoft see this coming when the same publishers already killed their Reader app (2000-2012) in exactly the same way.

Nadella needs to go.

For killing off an ebook service no one used?

I know there are probably a few thousand people really angry about this but why? The ebook market is dominated by Amazon with 88% of ebook sales in the UK go through Amazon, 83% of ebook sales in the US goes through Amazon. The remaining market share is split between multiple stores. In the US: B&N 4%, Kobo 0.3%, Apple 9%, Google Play Books 1.4% which totals 97.7%. Yeah MS should stay in the ebook business just for the few of you here. (A simple search for market share will tell you this.) It is a money loser for MS and you can't blame them for leaving. At least they are giving money back. If everyone that bought ebook left Microsoft because of this, nothing would happen to MS because there aren't enough people that actually used the service or cared. I know I don't want MS wasting time and resourced on something that only takes away from something else that actually people use (Xbox, Windows, Surface, etc.). Every company does this. When they are losing money, they cut the service or product. Everyone needs to get over it.

Your logic has no place here!

The question is, the failure of eBook for Microsoft is easily predictable, and the benefits from it is hardly seen. In this case, why Microsoft even tried that? I'm saying this not because I saw this news and now know it's failing; it's just something pretty clear at the time it was launched. I don't blame the current decision, I blame the very first decision.
I hope Microsoft would never try anything that would be a clear failure anymore, like the eBook this time, or the Kin. It's not just a waste of resouce, but also damages reputation. Note that I still support to try many things that might have chance at certain point, like WP, Zune, Band, etc..

No app on iOS and Android to read books...so you release one on those platforms idiots. We still don't even have a movies app to watch movies bought from the Microsoft store..and I have lots of movies, waiting for the day they scrap movies too and gimme refunds. Also with Xbox, Im 100% Physical....don't even have faith in digital content from Microsoft anymore. Seriously, Microsoft is very VOLATILE now and I think we should all stop investing in them. What a PATHETIC company Microsoft has become... a company I once loved and could kill for. It's kinda sad and it's the reason I keep on fighting with Editors who constantly defend them... That is fake editorial.

Sounds like you're a bit mad, but I could be just reading you wrong. 🤔🤔???

How could your be reading him wrong since there's no app for reading? Haha

The edge app is for reading

Hahaha very funny 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

You could read your books using the edge app

All this stuff is mobile.. Without a viable mobile solution MS is missing out.

Exactly. I was going to write exactly this. No mobile play, Groove becomes pointless. Books become pointless. And I'm speaking about for the masses, not enthusiasts such as myself. I wanted to start using it and bought 1 book, but realized no point because they don't have any mobile devices that will actually take advantage of it. Surface Go was a nice size, but Windows 10 Tablet Mode is garbage. Therefore, I found myself reaching for my iPad Pro more now. If you are tied into an ecosystem, starting with the device you carry with you (in my case Note 8), you will begin to use that and consider using more native services. Why should I invest in an ecosystem that doesn't start with what I carry with me most of the time? Books came waaaay too late. Already invested in Amazon Kindle years ago as I aso have a PaperWhite. Now instead of "Killing" Books, they should have partnered with Amazon Kindle. 🤷🏾‍♂️ No mobile means no point for the majority of their consumer service offerings that rely heavily on the mobile device in your pocket as an entry point.

Yepers, exactly. Gotta have mobile devices

Another Microsoft fail in a long string of failing and falling dominos... even amazon with their crappy fire tablet manages to beat Microsoft and hold on to market shared... That’s a statement in how mismanaged the company is to miss all the big mega trends.... and waste time on **** that people don’t really care about... like Microsoft cloud fail...

The most critical disadvantage of Microsoft, in my humble opinion, is their lack of persistence. An ecosystem, in order to keep its users sticky, is to safeguard their investment. However, from Zune to Microsoft Kin, to Microsoft Photosynth, to Windows RT, to Windows Phone 7.8, to Windows 10 Mobile, to Microsoft Band, and even to Windows 10 (as compared to CoreOS), Microsoft has been letting its fanboys regret their investments over and over again. It's no wonder even the (most) popular Microsoft-oriented communities (luckily not Windows Central, yet) has shifted to focus on Apple products. Microsoft deserves it. And it's more than enough.

How am I supposed to read books on Surface Go with Windows 10 S? The Nook app was written for Windows 8 and still behaves like it. Ugh. Kindle is long gone. Nadella should be next.

Need to replace my tablet too. But can’t bring myself to buy a Surface for this and similar reasons. As much as I hate to say it those new Bionic driven $499 iPads are looking pretty good. Apple has always been a little too Barbie and Ken for my taste, but at least they’re 100% behind their light computing ecosystem. And by light computing I mean more than just consumer. We have a lot of business use cases for iPads these days too. And not just in the enterprise sector... they are about ALL we see at small business locations like food trucks, barbers, Saturday markets, coffee shops too. Microsoft products used to be not only for Fortune 500 companies, but for small businesses too. NOT SO under Nadella and minions. As much as I hate to say it, I think best bet in light computing is clear... forget the Surface Go and get an iPad.

If it's a simple epub there are a bunch of app in the store that are quite decent like Freda, Bookviser, etc. It's still a crappy deal that MS is removing the books from the store though.

As many many other of Microsoft services, was never avalible for my and many other countries.
Funny thing is, that exactly these poorly localized services are mostly what Microsoft cancels shortly after. Cortana, Groove, Books...

> There's no app on iOS or Android that allows you to take your Microsoft Store books with you There is: Edge. It even advertises this in the Windows 10 Store "Books" Section when you buy a book. Regardless, since I began investing in the Microsoft ecosystem, I've seen them kill off far too many products and services I used: Windows Phone 7, Windows Phone 8, Windows 10 Mobile, Surface RT, Windows 8, Kinect, Project Spark, Xbox Fitness, Microsoft Band, Health app, Groove, R Tools for Visual Studio, Photosynth, EdgeHTML, and now Books too. I'm positive I'm forgetting even more. I'm honestly not sure why anyone on the outside looking in would even consider investing in Microsoft's ecosystem.

Nothing is shocking with Nadella and consumer anymore. Don’t care what the apologists say, Microsoft is not BECOMING the next IBM under this tool, they ARE the next IBM... with a gaming... hobby. Whoever said that Microsoft is their own worst enemy was spot on. This is what happens when you hire a guy without any fight in him for a CEO.

Shameful but not surprising. Nadella's intent on alienating as many Microsoft consumer fans as possible.

The writing was on the wall a long time ago here. Cortana is the next thing to go.

I understand the frustration and the regrets and the anger in the comments. Microsoft is not alone in giving up a number of consumer services, that applies also to Google (I use both Windows and Android). Google is constantly launching new consumer services, just to give them up shortly afterwards. There is even a wikipedia list of discontinued Google products stretching over several years. And Google is not always just launching new services to replace the ones they have given up. However, there is a significant difference: no matter how many consumer services Google is giving up, they do launch new consumer services all the time, which is not the case with Microsoft apart from gaming (which of course is hugely important). So to me it is not so much about Microsoft giving up consumer services that you have come to appreciate like Groove Music which I loved, but have since replaced with Google Music, which I will now have to give up, because it is being replaced with You Tube Music. I do not require that Microsoft have their own broad range of consumer services, but at least they should ensure that I can access a broad range of consumer services from others in the Windows Store. Like a Kindle app, like major electronic media apps, like a Pocket app. However, when they neither offer their own consumer services nor offer access to consumer services from others on the Windows platform, then it becomes a major problem. To be fair: in the area of devices Microsoft have shown that they can nail it in the consumer area: the Surface Go in my mind is the absolute best consumer device of 2018.

I you want stabitly for services is your best bet. Stuff like music, video, games, mail, photos, notes, calendar, etc has there since iOS3 and is still all supported and expanded upon. Only downside is that on Windows it feels like getting to your stuff is a hackjob of bad tools (iTunes / iCloud) and terrible websites (iCloud.com)

I haven’t willingly read any books in almost 4 years. Most young people now a days don’t read books for a hobby. Besides Microsoft did a horrible job here. US only, no multi platform support and Edge as a reader?? It really made sense for them to kill it off lol

Good thing they are refunding it. I got a few titles with MS rewards points. So I will get free cash in a sense.

You actually can read Microsoft books on edge mobile. On every platform...

Edge is, by far, the best ebook reader for Windows. I hope they reconsider their decision and keep the epub reader features on the new Edge with Chromium.

The thing I'm worried about is... MS is supposed to be working on new form factors and a modular OS. What are we going to do on these devices without an ecosystem or apps? (no kindle app, Amazon Music app is meh, etc) Though the W10 Audible app is an example of an amazing app. I wish WC would do writeup about it.

Ha ha ha. This is why I never get invested in any Microsoft products anymore.

Hey, I still buy some books in Nook format...

So I never bought an e-book through Microsoft, so I'm not really disappointed. I wish that all these platforms would just get out of the media business. Yes, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon should get out of the media business. And I think government should pursue Amazon on anti-trust laws concerning the Kindle. What should have happened years ago is we should have all agreed on a third party DRM service that any media producer and consumer could use for digital media. So when you buy digital media, the digital media company encrypts the media with your DRM account and then you decrypt with your account. This is sort of what Sony set up with Adobe digital rights management when they introduced their e-readers back around 2007 (I'm guessing; trying to remember). Sony also used an open ebook standard called epub. Sony epub using Adobe digital rights management then became the foundation for public library ebook distribution. Kobo sort of followed this model. And then came Kindle and sort of ruined it with a proprietary format and DRM. As consumers we should have protested. We should have demanded open formats and open DRM. We decided to go with proprietary formats and DRM because it was convenient and the platforms made it understandable. But I wish Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon would just get out of the media industry using a closed eco system of media distribution. I would be ok if they used an open system. To put an analogy of buying music CDs, we are now in a world were it is ok to buy all your CDs from one company and use that companies CD player. Like say you bought all your CDs from Sony and they only can be played on a Sony CD player. Back in the 80's and 90's that would have been dumb. It is dumb that we just buy books from Amazon. Government, break up Amazon's monopoly on ebooks. Use anti-trust laws.

Spot-on this is exactly what's currently going wrong in the industry with the lack of open formats. In addition I am old school I buy paper books and CD's and LP's as I do know that the artist get's a fair and better compensation for their intellectual property when it's delivered on physical media.

OMG CORTANAS DEAD

Of course no one buys books, no body knew about it except for geeks like us. Same as Groove. They don't tell anyone about these things. ******.

Does that mean the Edgium browser will not support inking and annotating in the pdf reader? That's the only reason I use Edge now.

I have no doubt that Nadella will drop inking and annotation. Edgium is a cheap knockoff of Chrome now. The imitation Rolex albeit. A vain hope that new laptop owners and especially enterprise IT shops will simply be too lazy to install Chrome over the browser that comes in the box.

After Microsoft got rid of Music I stopped buying Books and Movies from the store. I figured that those were next. Books are gone now. I'm almost certain Movies will follow. People will say they can't get rid of Movies but I believe in Microsoft and think they can do it.

Of course they can.
They will just say to link to your 'Movies Anywhere' and continue enjoying your movies on other platforms. And for movies not on the platform they probably take a small hit an refund too.

The microsoft store is a huge problem for them. Apps that were there are getting pulled or not updated, I just can't see where MS is going with it. It seems to be in a state of neglect, so wouldn't be surprised if it gets pulled eventually. I'm yet to work at a company where the store isn't blocked on windows 10. I get the feeling that MS is slowly retreating from all consumer focused endeavours, outside of xbox and surface.

Ha ha ha! Here we go again... Who would buy into any consumer venture Microsoft made? I had Windows Phone, Bands, Surface RT etc... Had enough now... Loving my BlackBerry KeyOne and Google Slate...

I don't think many people were reading ebooks on their Edge browser on their laptops and Windows tablets. I know I wouldn't want to read that way. But I probably would have on an Andromeda device, or that larger clamshell device whose code name I can't remember. I wonder if this means that is further delayed, or more proof it will never see the light of day?

I think people buy books from Amazon mostly online. It's a smaller market I think that is dominated by Amazon. But what others are saying is true. MS keeps killing off products and it's become really annoying. Instead of figuring out how to make them profitable they kill off products I can understand certain products but it's a shame on one's we loved.

Is there even a point to having a microsoft store anymore. I like the idea of having apps for windows easily found within a "curated" store, instead of searching around endless in the wild west of the web. But I can't help see a trend of a relevance of the store at all. I do look for apps. But the most important task is mainly updating apps I have 90% of the time. That could also be part of app management in settings. The future does look gloom. Relevance of PWA and UWP in the store? Do we really need a tablet UI in windows. Is the touchscreen relevance dead. Oh, wait, is it better to go back to windows 7 and call it a day?

I'm a heavy ebook buyer and reader, AND something of a Microsoft fan. Overall, I like where it's headed. But MS eBooks held absolutely no interest for me. There are two major ebook infrastructures, Kindle and ePub (NOT Apple! Sheesh! There are ePub apps for every operating system and you DON'T need Apple anything to read ePub.). I saw no value for me, or any consumer for that matter, for a 3rd infrastructure system. ESPECIALLY one that I couldn't use on Motorola phone or my Lenovo Tablet with a native app. Anyone more than casually involved with eBook reading could have told you this day was coming from the very start.