Ha ha!
Well, I don't think any of us were surprised by this news. I was secretly hoping that they would err on the side of keeping some of the existing EU, perhaps even grandfathering in select works to this new ""canon.""
The "Legends" banner to me implies the same thing as the "Infinities" logo. Is it indeed all prior books that will carry such a label? Even things like KOTOR, set thousands of years before anything having to do with the films? That seems somewhat arbitrary and harsh to me. I totally get having to jettison the entire post-ROTJ EU, and perhaps even heavily pruning the rest. I'm just surprised it all had to go, even very recent publications set in prior eras.
Perhaps it's asking for too much, but I am a little disappointed they didn't put together a short list of a few key works that can be grafted into this new canon. Take something like "The Approaching Storm" for example, which was written during the production of AOTC as an official lead-in novel. Surely something like that wouldn't harm future continuity, even if other things like the various Clone Wars novels might.
Even though I haven't done much more than dip my toes into the EU at any point, I appreciate its existence. To have that depth as a backdrop lends verisimilitude to the Star Wars universe and makes it feel like a genuine subcreation that can be explored almost endlessly. With the recent announcement, it's as if a black hole swallowed most of it up and created a vaccum of content. Are other authors going to now rewrite the various eras of the Star Wars story? Could Zahn or other others "resubmit" their books for "canonization," if they like?
Then again, I'm the sort of geek who was tickled by the Paul McGann 'Doctor' character popping up in the mini-episode of Doctor Who "Night Of The Doctor" to, among other things, bring into screen-continuity all his various audio adventure content. I like it when a franchise goes out of its way to demonstrate kindness to the continuity of its past. That care and attention to subcreation is part of what makes it fun.
All that being said, I still have questions about all this and I hope they continue to clarify what is going on.