Windows 10 store will start selling e-books soon, leak suggests

Microsoft seems poised to get into the e-books business, judging by the latest leak posted by MSPowerUser. The outlet recent posted several images of Windows 10 store features depicting e-book sales pretty clearly.

Judging from the screen shots, the allegedly forthcoming e-books portion of the Windows Store will have its own dedicated tab and store front on PCs and phones running Windows 10. There’s a focus on providing curated lists and collections as well as advertised new releases.

MSPowerUser goes on to point out that this news follows Microsoft’s adoption of the EPUB file standard for e-books within its Edge browser. The outlet also reports that this was laying the groundwork for the Books page on the Windows Store, with Edge being the method for accessing purchased e-books.

Luckily, Edge is said to boast strong support for the EPUB standard, offering bookmarking as well as tables of contents, font customization and more through this file type.

The website finally reports that this feature will launch alongside the Creators Update set to release in spring 2017, so it shouldn’t be much longer (even less so for Insider Preview members). 

If you ask us, Microsoft would do well to find niche’s that Amazon hasn’t yet dominated, like technical documents, white papers, and perhaps even nerdier publications like zines.

Microsoft responded to a request for comment with the following statement:

"The Windows Insider Program was created to enable Microsoft to test different features and functionality which will influence future versions of Windows. We regularly test new features and changes to existing features to see what resonates well with our fans. Stay tuned for more information soon."

Via PCWorld

Joe Osborne

Joe Osborne is the Senior Technology Editor at Insider Inc. His role is to leads the technology coverage team for the Business Insider Shopping team, facilitating expert reviews, comprehensive buying guides, snap deals news and more. Previously, Joe was TechRadar's US computing editor, leading reviews of everything from gaming PCs to internal components and accessories. In his spare time, Joe is a renowned Dungeons and Dragons dungeon master – and arguably the nicest man in tech.