Tolino

The title of this article is ambiguous. On the Italian scholar of Islam, see Serena Tolino .

Tolino (spelling: tolino ) is a brand name for e-book readers and tablets that have been marketed by booksellers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland since 2013. Since 2014 the e-book readers have also been sold in Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy. From 2013 to the beginning of 2017, the technical marketing partner was Deutsche Telekom . The devices have been developed by the Japanese company Rakuten since the beginning of 2017 .

Tolino Alliance

Allianz history

The German booksellers Club Bertelsmann , Hugendubel , Thalia and Weltbild founded the Tolino Alliance together with Deutsche Telekom. Deutsche Telekom acts as a technology partner within the alliance, responsible for all software and hardware and also provides the technical platform for e-book sales in the Tolino system. Despite the merger for the distribution of the Tolino reading devices, the Tolino booksellers are still in competition with each other. The motivation for founding the Tolino Alliance was to offer an e-reading solution for the German book trade and to stop customers from migrating to international competition (above all Amazon's Kindle products). Especially because Amazon's closed system (e-books can only be read in Amazon's proprietary AZW format) makes it more difficult for customers to return to the German book trade ( lock-in effect ).

The first negotiations were held in spring 2012 between the four leading German booksellers at the time; the Tolino Alliance was founded in summer 2012.

The development of the Tolino brand took place until March 2013, when Tolino (together with the first reader called Tolino Shine ) was introduced to the public.

In January 2014 the founding member Weltbild filed for bankruptcy and was taken over by Paragon Partners in April 2014 . Shortly before, in March 2014, Deutsche Telekom had set up its own e-book shop “PagePlace”.

During the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2014, the book wholesaler Libri announced that it would become a cooperation partner of the Tolino Alliance. This gave more than 1000 independent bookstores the opportunity to also sell Tolino products and to connect their online shops to the Tolino cloud. With this new partner, the founding goal of a comprehensive alternative for electronic reading and for the entire German book trade was achieved.

The Belgian dealer Standaard Boekhandel also joined the Tolino Alliance in autumn 2014 . Another partner, the Italian bookseller IBS Italy , joined in the winter of 2014. IBS distributes books through the portals ibs.it and libraccio.it.

In September 2015 it was announced that the bookstores Mayersche and Osiander had also joined the Tolino Alliance as new partners.

On an international level, the Dutch bookseller Libris.nl (also blz.nl) strengthens the Tolino Alliance in Europe.

In November 2015, another online shop of the Italian Tolino partner IBS was launched on the market. Since then, indiE-Book.it has also been selling Tolino products in Italy.

As previously announced by Direct Group Bertelsmann , the founding member Club Bertelsmann ( derClub.de ) ceased operations at the end of 2015 .

In January 2017, Deutsche Telekom announced that it had sold its stake in Rakuten . The German Federal Cartel Office approved the takeover of Tolino by Rakuten, which also sells the competing product Kobo , on January 20, 2017.

Device history

In March 2013, the Tolino brand was introduced to the public along with the brand's first e-book reader, the Tolino Shine . As of November 2013, two tablets, Tolino Tab 7 ″ and Tolino Tab 8.9 ″, complemented the range.

In April 2014, the second, improved e-book reader Tolino Vision was released .

In November 2014, the recently improved Tolino Vision 2 e-book reader (with water protection and tap2flip ) and the Tolino Tab 8 ″ , positioned as a reading tablet, were presented.

At the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2015, the Tolino Vision 3 HD , the successor to the Tolino Vision series and located in the high-priced segment, and the Tolino Shine 2 HD , the cheaper version and a further development of the Tolino Shine, were released.

The direct successor to the Tolino vision 3 HD, the Tolino vision 4 HD , appeared in November 2016 . The device is technically identical, but offers a night mode and twice the memory of 8 GB.

At the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2018, the Tolino Shine 3 was presented, the first device in the Tolino series without a home button.

Tolino brand

According to the Tolino Alliance, Tolino is characterized by its special closeness to the customer, as it deviates from the exclusive online offer from Amazon with on-site advice at the respective booksellers. In addition, openness is communicated in relation to the open e-book formats that are supported by the Tolino devices. These are the standard formats PDF , ePUB and TXT ; both with and without copy protection . Since these formats are also used by the public lending libraries in Germany to regulate the loan times of e-books, the Tolino devices are compatible with this content.

Logo of the tolino brand with a butterfly motif

The Tolino brand logo consists of a blue butterfly on a white background with the words “tolino”, a combined word and image brand . The butterfly motif occurs repeatedly on the Tolino brand website and on Tolino products. The name Tolino and the associated word and image mark were developed and designed by the Stuttgart brand agency medienformer GmbH. Another distinguishing feature of Tolino products is the smiley face, which is often shown as a standby image in advertising materials on e-book readers. However, only the “sleeping smiley” is used on the e-book readers themselves.

Tolino products and services

Tolino primarily offers e-book readers with an open ecosystem (compatible with EPUB, PDF and TXT). The product range has been expanded since 2013 by the Tolino tablets, which have been equipped with the special Tolino app and are therefore intended to facilitate reading on the tablets.

In addition to the hardware (e-book readers and tablets), there are also software products from the Tolino Alliance, which are part of the Tolino ecosystem and can be used by users free of charge.

This includes the Tolino cloud, which is a central part of the Tolino ecosystem. It acts as a central online storage space for e-books and can be managed with the Tolino web reader. The webreader also offers the option of reading e-books online directly in the browser - without installing an app or e-book reader hardware.

Provider of the tolino app

The booksellers of the Alliance also provide readers of e-books with various apps free of charge for Android and iOS devices, which have the same structure (developed as a white label app by Deutsche Telekom) and have different brand names depending on the bookseller . The Tolino apps can be recognized by the logo in the app stores.

A special service of the Tolino Alliance is the library link, with which the e-book libraries of all participating booksellers can be connected and displayed in a shared library.

Tolino also supports the online lending of e-books via the eLibrary .

Tolino e-book reader

Tolino Vision on standby

Tolino Vision 2 in standby mode

Tolino e-book readers are devices with an e-ink display that have a screen diagonal of 15.24 cm (6.0 ″) (12 cm × 9 cm) or 19.81 cm (7.8 ″) . They support EPUB, PDF and TXT files. The following variants currently exist:

• Tolino Shine (2013)
• Tolino Vision (2014)
• Tolino Vision 2 (2014)
• Tolino Shine 2 HD (2015)
• Tolino Vision 3 HD (2015)
• Tolino Vision 4 HD (2016)
• Tolino page (2016)
• Tolino epic (2017)
• Tolino Shine 3 (2018)
• Tolino page 2 (2019)
• Tolino Epic 2 (2019)
• Tolino Vision 5 (2019)

Tolino tablets

The Tolino tablets complement the product portfolio of the Tolino Alliance. The Tolino Tab 7 ″ and the Tab 8.9 ″ were presented in November 2013. Both use the Android  4.2.2 operating system and an ARM processor (Quad Core Rockchip 3188 with 1.6 GHz). 16 GB of memory are available for the operating system and applications. This memory can be expanded by up to 64 GB with a microSD card.

In October 2014, the new Tolino Tab 8 ″ model (also an Android tablet) was presented and has been available in stores since then.

Tolino Tab 8.9 ″

Tolino Tab 7 ″

The smaller tablet offers a color screen with 1440 × 900 pixels and 17.78 cm diagonal, one GB of RAM and a built-in camera.

Tolino Tab 8.9 ″

The color screen is significantly larger with 1920 × 1200 pixels and 22.6 cm diagonal. The device offers two GB of RAM and contains two built-in cameras.

Tolino Tab 8 ″

This tablet runs with Android  4.4 on an Intel Atom processor and has a screen size of 20.32 cm (8 inches). The color screen ( WUXGA resolution) offers 1920 × 1200 pixels with a point density of 283 dpi. With dimensions of 215 mm × 125 mm × 8 mm, the tablet weighs 308 g. A front camera and 16 GB of storage space are available.

Tolino cloud

The Tolino Cloud is the central online storage space for e-books in the Tolino system. 25 GB is available to customers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands the cloud storage is 5 GB. To use the Tolino Cloud you need a user account with a bookseller of the Tolino Alliance. The Tolino Cloud can be accessed from several devices (max. 5). These devices can be synchronized via the Tolino cloud if desired. This means that the locally stored reading content and the reading status can be accessed by other mobile devices. E-books bought from a Tolino bookseller are automatically saved in the Tolino cloud. E-books purchased in other shops can be uploaded manually to the Tolino cloud, provided they are in PDF or ePUB format. The cloud can be managed via the Tolino web reader in the browser or via the Tolino e-readers and Tolino apps.

Web reader

The Tolino Alliance offers a web reader that enables e-books to be read in the browser and serves as an administration and access interface for the cloud. It can be accessed on the joint brand website under the proper name "tolino Webreader". It supports the EPUB3 format and can be accessed with most browsers.

Explanatory videos

Since December 2015, the Tolino Alliance has been offering a series of explanatory videos (proper name tolino explanatory video ) on its YouTube channel , which are intended to explain how to use the e-book readers, e.g. B. for basic functions and the first use of the e-book readers, the purchase of e-books and the Adobe copy protection.

Technical specifications

Web links

Commons : Tolino  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Tolino website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ This is how the Tolino partners introduce the new brand. Retrieved March 16, 2014 . 
2. ↑ Tolino Shop at Standaard Boekhandel. Retrieved December 7, 2014 . 
3. ↑ Tolino Shop at Libris. Retrieved December 7, 2014 . 
4. ↑ Tolino shop at IBS. Retrieved December 7, 2014 . 
5. ↑ Michael Schäfer: Tolino Vision 4 HD in the test: With blue light filter and twist-proof micro USB . In: ComputerBase . ( computerbase.de [accessed December 20, 2017]).
6. ↑ The world view is about to end. Retrieved March 16, 2014 . 
7. ↑ Munich financial investor takes over Weltbild . In: Welt Online . May 11, 2014 ( welt.de [accessed February 9, 2016]).
8. ↑ Telekom closes the PagePlace. Retrieved March 16, 2014 . 
9. ^ Tolino for the whole book trade. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on October 26, 2014 ; Retrieved October 26, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
10. ^ Tolino for the whole book trade. Retrieved February 2, 2015 . 
11. ^ Deutsche Telekom: Mayersche and Osiander become tolino partners. In: ebookreader-zubehoer.de. September 17, 2015, accessed May 31, 2018 ( source ). 
12. ↑ Bertelsmann will close its book club by the end of 2015 . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . June 17, 2014, ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed February 9, 2016]).
13. ↑ Tolino Alliance loses Bertelsmann Book Club as a partner. Retrieved September 1, 2015 . 
14. ↑ Telekom leaves Tolino. faz.net, accessed January 2, 2017 . 
15. ↑ Telekom gives up Tolino alliance. spiegel.de, accessed on January 2, 2017 . 
16. ↑ Cartel Office approves takeover of Tolino-System by Rakuten ( Memento of the original from January 21, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Donaukurier, January 20, 2017 
17. ↑ Tolino Vision 3HD, Shine 2HD eBook Reader presented for the first time at the Frankfurt Book Fair. In: www.ebook-reader-vergleich.de. www.ebook-reader-vergleich.de, accessed on February 9, 2016 . 
18. ↑ Martin Holland: Tolino Shine 3: New e-reader now a little lighter and with a lot more memory . heise.de. October 10, 2018. Retrieved October 16, 2018.
19. ↑ Johannes Haupt: Tolino Shine 3: New middle class reader in Kobo dress . read.net. October 10, 2018. Retrieved October 16, 2018.
20. ↑ tolino - the eReading brand of German booksellers. Retrieved September 9, 2019 (German). 
21. ↑ tolino website. Retrieved February 8, 2016 . 
22. ↑ tolino. Retrieved February 17, 2020 . 
23. ↑ tolino - Android apps on Google Play. Retrieved November 24, 2018 . 
24. ↑ "tolino" in iPhone and iPad apps | fnd. Retrieved November 24, 2018 . 
25. ↑ Shopping with Tolino in other Tolino stores [instructions]. In: www.lesen.net. read.net, accessed February 9, 2016 . 
26. ↑ Peyton, Christine: The Tolino book - The understandable instructions. For Tolino Vision 2 and Tolino Shine . 1st edition. Vierfarben, Bonn 2014, ISBN 978-3-8421-0142-5 .
27. ↑ Which tolino do I need? eReader or tablet? (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on October 7, 2015 ; accessed on March 16, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
28. ↑ Manage content in the Tolino Cloud [instructions]. In: www.lesen.net. Retrieved February 9, 2016 . 
29. ↑ tolino - the eReading brand of German booksellers. Retrieved September 9, 2019 (German). 
30. ↑ tolino explanatory videos - Help & tips for the tolino eBook reader - YouTube. Retrieved September 9, 2019 . 
31. ↑ Tolino Epos - Technical data and equipment. Accessed on May 29, 2017.
32. ↑ Tolino Shine - Technical data and equipment. Retrieved April 13, 2014 . 
33. ↑ - ( Memento of the original from January 18, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.