There once was a dream in Germany that local businesses could band together to combat the Amazon threat. The Seattle company controls 75% of the digital book market in the US and 95% in the United Kingdom. Germans did not want a foreign company to have that much clout and the dream was realized.
Weltbild, Hugendubel, Bertelsmann Club, Deutsche Telekom and Thalia all formed a company called the Tolino Consortium. Their mandate was to open up a digital bookstore and develop a series of e-readers to sell. This allowed the Tolino Shine and Vision to receive major publicity and high availability in bookstores all over the country.
One of the big advantages that Amazon has over their competitors is their Kindle Direct Publishing system. This gives independent authors authors to submit their latest novel and have it available to purchase all over the world. This was the missing piece of the puzzle for Tolino, but now they too have a self-publishing option.
The new self-publishing portal is called Tolino Media. Authors earn a 70% commission on the title sold and their books will be promoted in the Tolino bookstore.
There are other companies that also offer a self-publishing solution for Germans, such as Xinxii. The problem is, their chiefly just digital platforms and not an all in one solution like Tolino.
German authors can not only have their e-books sold in their home country, but also in other markets that Tolino operates in. This includes Austria, Belgium, Italy, Netherlands and Switzerland. International authors, such as those in the US can use Draft2digital to distribute their titles into the Tolino Bookstore.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.