Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-1894786-20160711053400/@comment-996391-20160711184637

Yes, this has been discussed before, and the result doesn't go in favor of those stories.

First, the author of those stories is the only person to claim that the stories are set in the MCU. The stories were never advertized as part of the MCU and no one from Marvel ever said the stories are set in the MCU.

Second, to quote the author, she said the stories are "basically MTU which is how I think of the Marvel TV universe - cinematic but still with Coulson very much around!" Therefore, she doesn't even understand that the "TV universe" as she calls it, and the cinematic universe, are one and the same. At first glance, the first book is set in the aftermath of the Battle of New York but in a world where the Avengers are well aware that Phil Coulson is still alive, which is not the case in the MCU. In fact, in those stories, Coulson is still just an average S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and not at the head of a team of special agents, like in the MCU. Therefore, there are too many differences between the universe of those two stories and the regular MCU.

To conclude, those two stories are not set in the MCU (Earth-199999) but in some deviation of it, like all those Marvel's "What if...?" stories. We could call it Earth-200000 or whatever you want (I don't know how exactly all those universes get their designation numbers) but those stories are not part of the MCU.