Tolino is a brand for e-book readers and tablets, which has been sold by bookshops in Germany, Austria and Switzerland since 2013. Since 2014, e-book readers have also been distributed in Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy. Deutsche Telekom was the technical marketing partner from 2013 to early 2017. Since the beginning of 2017, the devices have been further developed by the Japanese company Rakuten.
The Tolin Alliance
The Tolino Alliance was founded by the German book club Bertelsmann, Hugendubel, Thalia and Weltbild together with Deutsche Telekom. “Deutsche Telekom was the technology partner of the Alliance, responsible for all software and hardware and the technical platform for the distribution of e-books in the Tolino system. “The motivation for the establishment of the Tolino Alliance was to offer German book retailers an e-reading solution and to stop customers switching to international competitors (in particular Amazon’s Kindle products). In particular because Amazon’s closed system (e-books can only be read in Amazon’s proprietary AZW format) makes it difficult for customers to return to the German book trade (lock-in effect).
In spring 2012, the first negotiations took place between the four leading German booksellers at the time; in summer 2012, the Tolin Alliance was established.
The Tolino brand was under development until March 2013, when Tolino (together with the first Tolino Shine reader) was presented to the public.
In January 2014, the founder Weltbild filed for insolvency and was acquired by Paragon Partners in April 2014. Prior to that, Deutsche Telekom discontinued its PagePlace e-bookstore in March 2014.
In October 2014, at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Libri, a book wholesaler, announced that it would become a cooperation partner of the Tolino Alliance. This enabled more than 1,000 independent bookshops to also sell Tolino products and connect their online stores to the Tolino Cloud. With this new partner, the main objective of creating a common alternative to e-reading and the German book trade as a whole has been achieved.
In autumn 2014, the Belgian retailer Standaard Boekhandel joined the Tolino alliance. In winter 2014, another partner, the Italian bookseller IBS Italy, joined. IBS distributes books through ibs.it and libraccio.it.
In September 2015, it was announced that the booksellers Mayersche and Osiander joined the Tolino Alliance as new partners.
On an international level, the Dutch bookshop Libris.nl (also blz.nl) strengthens the Tolino Alliance in the European region.
In November 2015, another Italian Tolino partner, IBS, launched another online shop. indiE-Book.it has since then also distributed Tolino products in Italy.
As previously announced by Direct Group Bertelsmann, the founder of Club Bertelsmann (derClub.de) ceased operations at the end of 2015.
In January 2017. “In January 2017, Deutsche Telekom announced the sale of its stake in Rakuten. 20 January 2017. The German Federal Cartel Office cleared the takeover of Tolino by Rakuten, which also distributes a competing product, Kobo.
History of installations
In March 2013, the Tolino brand was launched to the public with the first Tolino Shine e-book reader. Since November 2013, the range has been expanded with the launch of two tablets, the Tolino Tab 7″ and the Tolino Tab 8,9″.
In April 2014, a second, improved e-book reader “Tolino Vision” was launched.
In November 2014, the improved e-book reader “Tolino Vision 2” (with water protection and tap2flip function) and the tablet “Tolino Tab 8″ for reading were launched.
The Tolino Vision 3 HD, a continuation of the Tolino Vision series in the high-end segment, and the Tolino Shine 2 HD, a lower-priced version and a continuation of the Tolino Shine, were launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2015.
In November 2016, the direct successor to Tolino vision 3 HD, Tolino vision 4 HD, was launched. It is technically identical, but has a night mode and twice as much memory – 8 GB.
In October 2018, the Tolino Shine 3 was launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair – the first Tolino without a home button.
The Tolino brand
According to the Tolino Alliance, Tolino stands out from exclusive online offers by providing personalised advice on-site at the respective bookshops. In addition, openness is communicated in terms of the open e-book formats supported by Tolino devices. These are the standard formats PDF, ePUB and TXT; both with and without copy protection. As these formats are also used by German public libraries to regulate ebook lending terms, Tolino devices are compatible with this content.
“The Tolino brand logo consists of a blue butterfly on a white background with the words “tolino” – a combined word and image mark. The butterfly motif is repeated on the Tolino brand website and Tolino products. The name ‘Tolino’ and the associated word and image mark were developed and designed by the Stuttgart-based trademark agency ‘medienformer GmbH’. Another distinctive feature of Tolino’s products is the smiley face, which often appears as a stock image in promotional material for e-book readers. However, the e-book readers themselves only use a “sleeping smiley” for this purpose.
Tolin products and services
“Tolino primarily offers e-book readers with an open system (EPUB, PDF and TXT compatible). Since 2013, Tolino tablets have been added to the product range with a dedicated Tolino app to promote reading on tablets.
In addition to the hardware (e-book readers and tablets), there are also Tolino Alliance software products that are part of the Tolino system and are available free of charge to users.
These include Tolino Cloud, which is a key component of the Tolino system. It acts as a central online repository for e-books and can be managed using Tolino Web Reader. The Web Reader also allows reading eBooks online directly in a browser, i.e. without installing a software application or eBook reader software. Alliance retailers partly use the Web Reader to read samples on their websites.
A special service of the Tolino Alliance is library linking, where the e-book libraries of all participating booksellers can be combined and displayed in a common library.