Sucky situation, not really an Apple fan, I do Android, Calibre on my laptop, and synch to Aldiko on my tablet and phone. I tend to prefer nonDRM books, but use Calibre add ons to remove DRM on the stuff I buy and back up onto DVD and thumb drive. Not fond of storing in cloud, for the reason of losing the files.
By money bait , Apple trying to upsell storage space or data access blocking for ransom?