PC_Advisor_Issue_264_July_2017

How to: Buy and read books in Microsoft’s browser
The Windows Store
makes buying ebooks easy
Windows’ ebook-buying process begins with
Windows 10’s Store app, which as of the
Creators Update adds an ebook store alongside
its selection of apps, games, music, and movies.
All told, the Store app has evolved into a
respectable marketplace.
Not surprisingly, the ebook store looks
remarkably like the other categories: At the
top of the screen are a few ‘hero’ selections, a
handy link to some free classics, and some links
to ‘top’ and ‘featured’ books. How many books
does Microsoft offer? “Hundreds of thousands,”
according to a company representative, with
plans to offer New York Times bestsellers as
well as other top titles across a range of genres.
Scroll down, and you’ll see the handiwork of
Microsoft’s curators, with collections of different
genres and other featured works. Though there’s
a search box, you can’t do something as basic
as search for ‘cookbooks’. That term appears in
the genre-based collections at the bottom of the
main page, however.
As we were writing this, Microsoft had not highlighted any sales
or discounts, something the company will need to do if it truly
wants to challenge in the market. Amazon, for example, competes
notoriously hard on price. Disappointingly, some books, such as the
Harry Potter series, simply weren’t available in the Microsoft Store
at the time of writing.
If you’re the type of person who
reads a band’s biographical info
in Groove Music, you’ll notice
a similarity: massive blocks of
summary text
Microsoft’s individual descriptions of the books are
a bit sparse, lacking previews or any art beyond
the illustration on the book jacket. Since Edge’s
e-reader only supports DRM-protected books in
the EPUB format, that’s all you’ll find inside the
Store. (Edge itself includes a PDF reader, too.)
If you choose to buy a book, Microsoft uses
any stored payment information you have inside
its system to charge you. Unfortunately, there are
no refunds or trial periods. What’s nice, though,
is that Microsoft defaults to using biometric
identification within Windows Hello to streamline
the purchase, if your device supports it. (If it
doesn’t, you can use a PIN or password instead.)
Purchasing an ebook is easy
June 2017 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to 99