From Ingram’s public relations department:
Ingram Content Group has been working with Microsoft to build inventory for the initial launch of the new books category in the Windows Store. CoreSource®, Ingram’s digital asset management and distribution platform, is already delivering content from over 750 publishers to the Windows Store.
With the Windows 10 Creators Update we are excited to bring books to the Windows Store,” said Alex Holzer, Director, Microsoft Digital Stores. “With books in Windows Store, you can discover and read e-books from your favorite authors across genres you love. We are pleased to work with Ingram’s team and CoreSource technology to bring content to readers.”
. . . .
“We’re always looking to add more distribution channels to CoreSource for our customers,” said Lewis Pennock, Director of Digital Retail Sales at Ingram Content Group. “Offering books in the Windows Store is one of the highest potential sales channels to come to the market in several years; it will be a great opportunity for our publishers to get their books into more readers’ hands across multiple devices.”
Link to the rest at Ingram
PG says there’s an art to writing good press releases. To quickly study that art, compare and contrast this Ingram press release with any press release issued by Amazon.
Okay, I’ve read the article, searched a dozen or so pages on MS’s website, and even done a google search but I still can’t determine whether the new store will allow indies to publish their books there.
Did I just over-read this point or is it so obvious that everyone is getting it except me?
I could not find the info, either.
When the ebook store went into limited beta in January, ENGADGET coverage included this:
“Microsoft says ebooks in the Windows Store is “just a first step towards empowering people like entrepreneurs, students, creators, educators and others to learn and achieve more,” meaning it may have other educational projects in mind. Microsoft recently purchased LinkedIn, giving it access to the vast Lynda.com educational library, and as Techcrunch theorized, it may use that as a way to expand into professional training and development.”
https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/20/microsoft-is-testing-an-ebook-store-on-windows-10/
Professional training and development is a core function of Microsoft Press.
I visited the Microsoft blog that Ingram linked to, and there, near the end, it invited me to visit my local Microsoft store.
Don’t bother clicking on the link. No page exists.
The Ingram page and the blog both reference the Microsoft Store numerous times, without ever providing a link.
Typical Microsoft.
the ebookstore is not available online – I looked
Microsoft used to be famous for selling people their beta software.
Now it’s back to selling vaporware.
The more things change, the less Microsoft changes.
The url is wrong, should be
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/locations/all-locations
(if you back out to the main url and do a store search, you see the missing en-us part of the path. Adding that into your url fixes it. It’s probably a case of one hand not knowing what the other is up to. “Sad!”)
ETA – Microsoft stores are often in the same sort of upscale real estate that Apple stores are in. My local one is almost across the corridor from an Apple store. These are the same general sorts of places the Amazon stores are opening in. Amazon is playing catch-up in that regard.
It’s one thing to show up late for the party, another thing to show up after the beer is all gone – this is showing up after everybody has left and the hosts have gone to bed.
Or, they might be right on time to pick the bones of Nook.
If anybody knows how badly Nook is run, it’s MS.
Add in the barely there presence of Google and Kobo and there really is room for an Amazon alternative not tied to Apple hardware.
Open minds, folks.
It’s still early in the game.
The eBook market still has room to grow.
If their store is designed like their O/S then good luck finding anything.
My search feature can’t find a single file on my computer and I’m actually certified by Microsoft.
It’s an issue with the O/S, as I never had problems with previous O/S, dating back to good ole ’95.
I remember finally making the file search work, but I had to go in and make it index both the file names and the contents.
Then I had to walk away and let it index my hard drive for a couple hours. All right, most of the day.
Maintaining that index also can grind your poor computer virtually to a halt. Why I keep things organized the old-fashioned way, in folders other than “My Whatever…”. (Or “Libraries,” as they call them now.)
Indexing is always the first thing I kill off on a new install, and it’s been that way since they first put it into the OS.
I do use search on occasion – but it’s only doing a couple of hundred files at the very most, because I have at least a general notion of where something is, so it doesn’t matter that there is no index. It is handy for finding where I wrote a different version of a multi-word name – something that spellcheck doesn’t help you with at all, custom dictionary or not.
Windows has a store? Does it close at irregular times, losing your work?
(Sorry)
Don’t be sorry. That happened to me once, and it’s part of the reason I write longhand now.
Heh, I guess we’ll have to wait and see where this goes (if anywhere at all.)
“With the Windows 10 Creators Update we are excited to bring books to the Windows Store,”
If it requires ‘Windows 10’ to publish or read then it might be as useless as the Apple bookstore requiring a Mac. (Yes, this is from someone hoping their windows 7 system never dies … 😉 )
Windows 7 is Dah BEST !
Well, I will confess to still having a W2K server disk laying around (and systems still able to run it!) Didn’t bother with XP until I picked up a couple of little netbooks running it. 7 was what you could buy at Fry’s when I was putting together a new desktop ‘workstation’. Saw the WTH? over 8 and above and turned off the auto updates when the ‘take away your 7/8 licenses and force 10 on you (but it’s ‘free’ even if you don’t want it!)’ started happening.
Typing this on one of those little Raspberry Pi 3 Model B toys, and unless MS cleans up their act they won’t be seeing another thin dime from me – directly or indirectly.
Nah. Windows NT 4.5 was the bomb.
XP Professional – well, pretty good.
Windows 7, yech. But I can get along with it (although still with a lot more moving from the keyboard to the mouse, and several clicks instead of only one or two for very common operations).
You will convince me to use Windows 10 only at gunpoint.
Wups, probably shouldn’t have said that…