Most of the people won’t be aware that Microsoft owned an eBook store, which the tech giant has announced will be closed down soon. The company announced the news of removing its eBook division from its Microsoft Store on Tuesday, 2 April.
Microsoft introduced its eBook store back in April 2017 as a part of Windows 10 Creators Update. Like every other eBook Store, the Microsoft eBook Store also offered free eBooks and paid eBooks. But unlike the other eBook Stores, this eBook Store did not have any standalone app.
The company made its entry into the eBook business quite late, and the eBook Store itself could not add any value to the business of Microsoft, which can be a reason that the company has decided to discontinue its eBook division.
“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 stated in a post on its support page.
Microsoft has disclosed a few details over its support page, where it has mentioned that the users will be able to keep their eBooks in their Microsoft library and read the books till July this year. After July, the library will be removed, and any annotations made on the eBooks, in their eBook account on Microsoft’s eBook store will also disappear.
The company has offered refunds on every purchase the eBook Store users have made or for their preorders to buy books. The amount will be directly deposited to the payment methods the users used for the purchases or the amount will be credited to the user’s Microsoft Store account, which they can use for other purchases on the same platform.
Microsoft has also offered a $25 refund for the users who had annotations stored at the platform earlier than 2 April as an apology for the data loss and the inconvenience for the users. According to Microsoft, the refunds will start rolling out at the beginning of July 2019.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.