When I began to bring my concerns to Kobo web staff, I did a run around various other sites to see how they were handling this sort of thing. Kobo seems to be the only one that makes two different formats (mostly) routinely available of course, but I did learn some interesting things.
- Google Play, which uses Adobe Adept, is now letting folks know if a book is reflowable or non-reflowable, rather than just saying epub or PDF. This made sense to me as we are beginning to see non-reflowable epubs and reflowable PDFs. They don't seem to provide drm status, but I may not have run into it yet. See: https://support.google.com/googlepla...s_formats&rd=1
- Sony does list the format, for example, Adobe DRM EPUB. I am checking some of this with the book Pride and Prejudice, and I did wonder if Smashwords intended for this free book to have drm applied.
- Amazon doesn't sell epubs, but I understand there are some questions regarding which of the various Kindle formats are being provided.
- The amount of information available through Overdrive seems to be up to the individual libraries. My local library gives choices for format and has a separate listing for drm free books available digitally, but not through Overdrive. The Toronto library I looked at gives very specific information on the devices the books can be read on, but does not make a distinction between Kobo tablets and Kobo eink devices.
- Barnes and Noble seems to list books pretty much like Kobo does. For the free book available through Smashwords, no drm status was indicated and the format was eBook. This was also the case for a book that cost $15.00 from Random House.
I'm pretty sure Kobo will make a change; when it happens and what it looks like remains up in the air.