The thing that gets me is that most people can't just dump their IT contracts that quickly. Hosting is usually bought on a longer-term basis, and if - like here - the company is 'winding down' and doing a shitload of admin and rights reversions and all that, then why can't they take the buy buttons off and continue to let people log in and download for at least a couple of months? They need to do all of the accounting and paying people for the previous quarter anyway, so even if they DID have to spend another $100 on keeping the lights on for readers for a bit ... that's not exactly make-or-break.

(I completely missed the announcement last year, not being interested in Romance per se, so people in-the-loop had a warning).

My heart goes out to the people who had books in the pipeline, but especially to the authors who will be published on February 21st, and who cannot even in good faith tell anyone to buy their books.