To battle Kindle, German booksellers partner with Deutsche Telekom on new e-reader

German bookstore chains Thalia, Weltbild and Hugendubel have partnered with Bertelsmann and Deutsche Telekom to release a touchscreen, front-lit e-reader, the Tolino Shine.

It costs €99 (USD $128), is available for sale on March 7, and is intended to compete against Amazon’s Kindle and the Kobo in Germany. The Tolino will be sold at the partners’ 1,500 physical stores as well as online. An e-bookstore with about 300,000 German-language titles is accessible from the device. Users can also shop for e-books from the individual booksellers’ websites.