← Back

Open book, or locked book?

Ebooks come in two kinds. Open ones, which Graspium reads cover to cover. Locked ones, which Graspium leaves closed. Nearly every German ebook is open.

Open: watermark or no protection
Locked: Adobe DRM or tolino's own lock
Copy protection: NoKopierschutz: Nein

A usually invisible note inside the file says who bought it. Nothing is locked. Graspium reads the whole book.2

Copy protection: YesKopierschutz: Ja

The file is encrypted, usually with Adobe's system (Adobe DRM), and only approved apps hold the key. Graspium cannot read it and never tries to.

What Graspium sees Open book Locked book
Chat about the whole book
Summaries and search
Title, author and coverlisted as locked
How far you have readcoming soon
The passages you highlightedcoming soon
Notes you typed on a highlight
yes coming soon no

Check your book

Three questions. Then you know whether yours works.

Question 1 of 3
Where did you get the book?

Where your books can come from

Works with Graspium

  • Thalia (Germany and Austria)
  • Hugendubel
  • Osiander
  • bücher.de
  • eBook.de
  • Orell Füssli
  • meine Buchhandlung
  • Self-published tolino media titles, in any of these shops
  • Your own EPUB files, including free classics

Connect your tolino shop account and every open book you own syncs across on its own. No downloading, no files.

Does not work

  • Kindle
  • Onleihe and other library loans
  • Apple Books
  • Most English editions from the big UK and US publishers

Penguin, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Hachette and Simon & Schuster usually lock their English editions, even when you buy them at Thalia. Our test copy of Blood Meridian (Pan Macmillan) is locked. The German translation is a different edition, and open.

Why most German ebooks are open

The large German publishing groups dropped the hard lock almost all at once, in 2015. Readers found the Adobe accounts needed for locked books frustrating, support lines were busy, and a lock that is easy to break protects little. A watermark, one of them said, protects just as well.5

May 2015
dtv3
1,471 titles move to a watermark
July 2015
Bonnier4
Piper, Ullstein, Carlsen, arsEdition
August 2015
Holtzbrinck5
Rowohlt, S. Fischer, Droemer Knaur, Kiepenheuer & Witsch
1 October 2015
Random House6
Heyne, Goldmann, Blanvalet, DVA, btb and more
December 2016
Klett-Cotta7
With Tropen and Hobbit Presse
Today
Diogenes, Suhrkamp, Hanser, Aufbau, Lübbe
All sell without a hard lock

We checked what that means today. On 27 September 2026 we read the product pages of German-language ebooks in two shops. Not one title from a major German publisher was locked. The few locked ones were mostly self-published books whose distributor turns the lock on by default.

97 %of 898 titles at Thalia, no hard lock
399 / 399Thalia bestsellers, all open
90 %of 566 titles at eBook.de

How to spot it before you buy

The shop tells you on the product page, in German. The publisher sets the lock per edition; the shop only reports it. In our checks the same edition carried the same line in every shop.

ShopOpen, works with GraspiumLocked
Thalia, Osiander, bücher.deCopy protection: NoKopierschutz: NeinCopy protection: YesKopierschutz: Ja
Hugendubel, eBook.deWith watermarkmit Wasserzeichen versehenWith Adobe DRM copy protectionmit Adobe-DRM-Kopierschutz
beam-shopWatermark: yesWasserzeichen: jaSells no locked books

Locked book? Your highlights still travel.

coming soon

The book stays closed, and Graspium never opens it. But the tolino cloud also keeps, in plain form, the title and cover, how far you have read, and the text of every passage you highlight on your tolino. They are your own marks, and they do come across. We tested it.

1. Mark it on your tolinoHighlight the passages that matter to you.
2. It syncsOnly the marked text is sent on. The book stays closed.
3. Ask Graspium about itExplain this, connect it, quiz me on it.

What Graspium will not see: the rest of the book, and the sentences around your highlight. It knows exactly what you marked and nothing beyond it.

Questions

Is this legal?
Yes. Buying an ebook without a hard lock and reading it in any app you like is legal. The law only forbids breaking an effective copy protection (§ 95a of the German Copyright Act). Graspium never does that. Locked books are skipped and never opened.
Does Graspium remove DRM or watermarks?
Never. Graspium does not break a lock, does not remove a watermark, and does not help you do either. A locked book stays locked. Its file is never even downloaded.
My book says copy protection: yes. What now?
Graspium cannot read that book's text. Check whether another edition is open: German editions almost always are. Soon you will also be able to highlight passages on your tolino and ask Graspium about them.
Does it work with Kindle?
No. Kindle books stay inside Amazon's apps, so Graspium cannot reach them.
What about Kobo?
Not yet. A Kobo connection is in the works. Until then, you can upload any Kobo book that the Kobo store marks as DRM-free and lets you download as an EPUB.
Will my books be shared or used to train AI?
No. Your books are never shared with other users and never used to train AI models. To answer a question, Graspium sends only the passages that matter to our AI providers, and they do not train on them either.

Sources

  1. Digitale Rechteverwaltung, section on digital watermarks Wikipedia (DE)
  2. A watermark is "weiches DRM" Suhrkamp, ebook FAQ
  3. dtv moves 1,471 titles to a watermark from 1 May 2015 Börsenblatt, April 2015
  4. Bonnier drops hard DRM from 1 July 2015 heise online, June 2015
  5. Holtzbrinck follows from August 2015 lesen.net, July 2015
  6. Random House from 1 October 2015 lesen.net, August 2015
  7. Klett-Cotta switches to a watermark buchmarkt.de, December 2016
  8. All tolino media titles ship without copy protection tolino media FAQ

Shop samples: 898 German-language ebooks at thalia.de and 566 at ebook.de with a readable label, checked 27 September 2026. Counts titles, not sales.

Connect your tolino shop and see which of your books open.