WH Smith automatically adding DRM to DRM-free ebooks, but there's an interim solution while they fix it

The UK Bookseller WH Smith has been experiencing some kind of bug in its ebook store, whereby it adds DRM to all of the Kobo ebooks it sells, even the ones that are supposed to be DRM-free (like mine). Apparently, this is a metadata-parsing issue. I spoke to my agent and publisher, and WH Smith/Kobo came up with a good workaround while they fix the bug:

Kobo/WH Smith have come up with a solution that enables your e-books to still be on sale. The DRM wording has been manually removed from the WH Smith site and when readers click to purchase the book it forwards them to the Kobo site where it clearly states the e-books are DRM-free until WH Smiths is able to update their website which will be at the end of April.

Little Brother [eBook]

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: books • drm • ebooks • uk

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This is now — and apparently always was — not an issue of WHSmith “adding DRM” to ebooks; it’s simply a mundane problem with the Smith website hanging a DRM tag on every book listed, even if the work isn’t encumbered.

Here’s the complaining author’s blog post about the issue, now updated.
crimpers

Gentrified Thornton Dial for the digital era.
http://burntheflag.ca Jardine

I read that headline as Will Smith and wondered what the fuck his problem was.
- C W
  
  The answer to that question is Scientology, and lots of it.
Boundegar

There is a solution involving DRM-free paper.