Microsoft Plans To Add an Ebook Store To Windows 10 (mspoweruser.com)

Microsoft may have plans to give Windows 10 users the ability to purchase ebooks directly from the Windows Store. According to a report on MSPowerUser, Windows 10 Creators Update will feature a new book store interface that will support the purchase and viewing of books in the Microsoft Edge browser. The report claims that this feature will be coming to both Windows 10 Mobile and other Windows 10 variants on PCs and tablets. It's worth mentioning that Microsoft made EPUB support a feature of Microsoft Edge as part of its Windows 10 Creators Update Insider test builds last year.

Comments

Years late, millions short

[tripleevenfall]

Yet another soon-to-be short-lived MS attempt to be 5th or 6th to market with someone else's idea.

Did you know

[rossdee]

that there is a Kindle for PC that lets you read wBooks purchased from Amazon

or soesn't it work on Win 10

BTW I can also read books from the Kindle store on my phone and Fire Tablets

Re:Did you know

[Jason Levine]

Many libraries will also lend out Kindle versions of books. (They automatically expire and then can't be opened when due.) As an author, I love the Kindle platform. I make more money on the sale of a Kindle book than I do on the sale of a paperback. If Microsoft wants to even put a dent in Amazon's eBook empire, they're going to need cross-compatibility and a ton of titles to attract users and good royalty payment structures for authors. If their eBook store doesn't offer authors enough of a cut of sales, we'll all stick with Amazon. If not enough books are available, users won't use the service. If there aren't enough users, authors/publishing companies won't bother releasing their books on Microsoft's platform.

Side note: I liked that Amazon gave me the choice of whether to include DRM or not. (I didn't include it.) Somehow, I can't see Microsoft's eBook story NOT forcing DRM on all of the eBooks.

Re:Did you know

[taxman_10m]

Microsoft used to have the Reader I think it was called. The books were in the .lit format.

Re:Did you know

[stasike]

Install Calibre and google for Calibre plugin made by Apprentice Alf.

Problem with converting of DRM protected Kindle books will be solved.

Re:Did you know

[stasike]

Microsoft used to have the Reader I think it was called. The books were in the .lit format.

... and they abandoned all people that "purchased" DRM protected e-books from them.

First and most important question

[Opportunist]

Will we be able to disable/uninstall it?

a brief timeline for this innovation

[nimbius]

2009: Amazon releases kindle and an entire bookstore.
2010: Google digitizes and operates the largest e-book store on the planet.
2017: Microsoft gets excited about this new e-book technology its been hearing so much about and immediately declares it will offer a bookstore that only works with Microsoft products.

Re:a brief timeline for this innovation

[__aaclcg7560]

2006: Sony releases the Sony Reader for $600 USD.

I had a six-week contract to QA ebook titles on the Japanese hardware in the Summer 2005. Linux developers were in Japan, ebook conversion to HTML were in India, and my team of ten testers speed read 600 ebook titles for HTML issues in Silicon Valley. The Sony tax for having the Sony brand name prevented the device from being adopted widespread. Sony discontinued the device in 2014.

Although Sony no longer appears on my resume, I still get contacted by recruiters for jobs that require speaking fluent Japanese. I've worked for Japanese companies well enough to understand culture, and cleaned up Japan-to-English translations as a video game tester. I had to explain to a hiring manager who called from Tokyo that working at a Japanese companies doesn't mean I know how to speak fluent Japanese.

Re:a brief timeline for this innovation

[Wdomburg]

2000: Microsoft releases Pocket PC 2000 Phone Edition
2001: Nokia releases the Symbian based S60 software platform
2002: Blackberry releases the Blackberry 5810 smart phone
2007: Apple gets excited about this new Smartphone technology its been hearing so much about

they killed lit

[Anonymous Coward]

Would NEVER trust MS with any of my media after they killed LIT and all the tens of billions of .lit ebooks out there.

Re:they killed lit

[Anonymous Coward]

This. I bought a lot of ebooks in Microsoft Reader format back in the day, to read on my Pocket PC/Windows Mobile devices. Of course one day Microsoft decided it was bored with Microsoft Reader, and dropped it. So when that generation of devices became obsolete, your whole library became useless (unless you made the effort to decrypt the ebooks and convert them to another format, which was doable, but obviously a PITA). So now I'm going to buy ebooks that I'm guessing can only be accessed on a device with Microsoft's store, and signed in to the same Microsoft account? Not making that mistake again.

Windows is my tool

[hoggoth]

Windows is my tool. I use it to work. I don't want a damn eBook store or ads on my desktop or a touch interface that I can't touch at my desktop. It's like someone put a f**ing little LCD screen in the head of my hammer that shows me ads while I pound nails.

where's the focus?

[smithcl8]

MS needs to focus on what they are good at and spend the R&D time to develop the "next great thing". They have been late to so many tech trends over the past decade and need to create their own, instead of trying to skim a few dollars from established markets.

Re:cross platform books & music

[MightyMartian]

I buy plenty of books from Google's store. The first thing I do is decrypt them so I can read them in FBReader. Both Google's and Kobo's store use the Adobe DRM, so it's pretty trivial to decrypt.