A flipbook keeps the look of print but hides each article inside one file that phones struggle with and search engines barely read. Publish every article as its own web page, and keep the flipbook as an extra.

The issue online, page by page

The magazine goes to the printer as a PDF. The same file is uploaded to a flipbook service, and the issue appears online with pages that turn, complete with a shadow and sometimes a rustling sound.

On a laptop it looks impressive for about a minute.

On a phone the pages are tiny, the download is slow, and in some versions nothing appears at all. Nobody can link a friend to the article on page 23, and a search for that article finds nothing.

The flipbook kept the look of print. It left out most of what makes something work on the web.

How flipbooks are built

Many page-turning viewers were built in Flash, which no iPhone has ever run and Android phones dropped years ago. Some newer ones use HTML5 instead, but still show each page as a picture of the printed page.

Some services also surround the issue with their own branding and with links to other publications.

The other common approach skips the viewer and posts the whole issue as one large PDF, often many megabytes, because it came straight from the printer.

Either way, the issue arrives as one unit. The articles inside it have no existence of their own.

What the format costs

The third is the one publishers notice last. People share articles, not issues.

A writer wants to send round a link to their piece, and a reader wants to post the one story that mattered to them. A link to the flipbook opens the cover.

How search engines see it

Text inside a Flash viewer is mostly hidden from search engines. Pages shown as pictures contain no text at all.

A PDF can be indexed, but as one document with one title. A search for a single story, if it finds anything, lands on page one of a forty-page file, and the reader has to hunt.

An article published as a web page has its own address, its own title in search results and its own description. It can be found by people searching for exactly that subject, long after the issue has left the racks.

What an article page needs

The headline, the writer's name, the date and the issue it appeared in. Then the text, with photographs and their captions.

Pull quotes, columns and the page layout do not need copying. A single readable column, laid out for a phone first, serves the words better.

Most layout programs can export the text of each story, which saves retyping. Headings and captions need a check by eye afterwards.

Link each article to the issue's contents page, and to one or two related pieces from past issues.

A worked example

An organiser of a two-day comic convention, held each spring in a suburban exhibition hall, prints a forty-eight page program guide that has grown into a magazine: guest interviews, panel times, a floor map and the exhibitor list.

For years it went online as a flipbook a few weeks before the event. On the weekend itself, attendees opened it on their phones to check panel times, gave up, and queued at the information table.

Guests could not send fans a link to their own interview, and a search for a guest's name with the convention's name found nothing on its site.

For this year's event, the schedule went up as one page for each day, every guest got a page with their interview, and the exhibitor list became a page of its own.

The flipbook stayed, linked from the program page as the print edition.

Advertisers and the print edition

Print advertisers paid for a page in an issue, and the flipbook shows their page exactly as it was printed. That is one good reason to keep it.

Article pages can carry sponsors too, in whatever form was agreed: a mention, a logo, an ad beside the text. Agree that before the issue goes online, not after an advertiser asks where their page went.

If print ads carry web addresses, check that each still works. An ad in a flipbook stays online for years after the campaign it promoted has ended.

Keep the flipbook as an extra

Some readers enjoy the page-turning, and some want the PDF to print or keep. Neither is a reason to make it the only way in.

Publish the articles as pages, give each issue a contents page that links to them, and put a link to the print edition on that contents page.

Readers who want the printed look can find it. Everyone else, and every search engine, gets pages that work.

Back issues

Converting an archive of flipbooks all at once is rarely worth it.

Start with the articles people still ask about or search for, or that the publisher would like found: the guides, the profiles, the pieces that do not date.

Give each converted article the date of its original issue, so readers can tell how old it is.

For the rest, a contents list in text beside each PDF gives search engines and readers something to read until the article is converted.

The counter-case

A publication whose value lies mainly in its design, such as a photography annual or a lookbook, may reasonably lead with the print view on computers.

And a two-page newsletter may need nothing more than its stories as a short web page, without a viewer at all.

For a magazine or newsletter with articles worth reading on their own, though, publish each one as a web page and keep the flipbook as an extra.

With the next issue

  1. Export the text from the layout files.
  2. Give each article its own page and address.
  3. Write a headline and description for search.
  4. Build a contents page linking every article.
  5. Check each page on a phone.
  6. Link the print edition from the contents page.
  7. Convert popular back issues next.

Step two is the foundation for the rest. An article without its own address cannot be found, shared, linked or measured, however good the writing is.

Once articles live as pages of their own, keeping them accurate is covered in corrections noted at the foot of the article.

Frequently asked questions

What is wrong with a flipbook edition?

On phones it is slow, tiny or blank, search engines see one file or nothing, and no single article can be linked to, shared or measured.

Do search engines read a PDF magazine?

They can index a PDF, but as one document with one title, so a search for a single story rarely lands on the right page of it.

Why can't readers share one article?

Because the article has no address of its own. A link to the flipbook opens the cover, so the reader receiving it has to hunt for the story.

What does an article page need?

A headline, the writer, the date, the issue it appeared in, the text and photographs with captions, all in one readable column that works on a phone.

Should the flipbook be removed?

No. Keep it as an extra for readers who like the print look and for advertisers' printed pages, linked from each issue's contents page.

What about issues already published?

Convert the articles people still look for first. For the rest, a contents list in text beside each PDF gives search engines and readers something to read.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Every issue online as one flipbook?

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