There I was killing myself searching for free page turning software that can accept PDFs as a source. Thankfully, I found solace before death.
Where I work, we do a lot of brochures, booklets, collaterals and things that need to be paged through. As a resort hotel, we generate a lot of interest from overseas, and it’s not always possible to get these things that needs to be paged through to everyone, so a digital version is a great solution.
But if you’ve ever tried to look for page turning software, you’ll know that it’s really expensive, especially if you want the fancy page-turning effect. There are some free page turning solutions out there that uses JPG files, but they are limited in function and use. If you want to use PDFs as it’s source, usually it’s big money for that kind of page turning software.
Previously we used a company that charged per year for a set amount of issues and a set amount of pages per issue. It was a frightfully expensive exercise and when it became time to renew, I was tasked to find new, and preferably free PDF page turning software.
Dabbling in the world of open source software, I knew there was a free alternative, but search as I might, I couldn’t get the page turning software that gave everything I wanted. I wanted it to be able to use PDFs for source, have cool zoom and navigation features and, of course, I wanted it all for free.
I had several hit and misses with dumbed down free versions of paid-for software, which I still had to host on my own site. That isn’t great for bandwidth and all but kills searchability and makes it difficult to share. I nearly settled on a not-so-great-but-free-JPG-based option. Exasperated I typed in some fresh keywords and lo and behold, stumbled across issuu.com.
Issuu.com is like the YouTube of the book world. You can upload your publication in PDF format (although it has to be one, multi-page PDF) and issuu.com’s software does the rest. You can share it much like you would a YouTube video by sending it to friends, embedding it on your own website, or even linking to it through Facebook.
One of the big features I was looking for is that page turning effect and issuu.com automatically creates that for the publication. And using PDFs as source files for the pages, it can zoom and make even small print clear to read. The added benefit of PDFs are that the text contained within is searchable, enabling your publication to be found for relevant searches.
That only works if you don’t convert the text to curves of course. On my first upload to issuu.com, some of the fonts didn’t display correctly, but that could be because of some advanced effects that didn’t export well from CorelDraw. I converted the problem text to curves, which then displayed fine after upload.
Once uploaded, it creates a miniature version for you to embed in your webpage as an icon. You can actually page through the little icon too. Clicking on the centre of the mini-book launches the big book for full-screen browsing and reading.
Thank you so much for this post, it was so helpful and Issuu is so user friendly and professional. Appreciate it!
This is better then everything else I was looking at. I am designer and wouldn't use any of the other free ones you can get, neither I would pay about 699$ for using it for one year. Thank you for shareing!
Thank You Thank You Thank You!
Wow! Incredible! Thank you soooo much for sharing!
Superstar – thanks for this 🙂
Thanks for the tip. I was searching for free software using different search engines and I stumbled upon the site also. Thanks for letting me know that it is the best one out there.
This is brilliant, just what I needed. – How did you manage to get rid of the links/advert on the side??
I don't mind the watermark but would like it with just my doc no advert.
thank you
STL
Hi, I know this is late, but perhaps it can help somebody else also. To make your embed look like the one on this page, do this – it should work: On issuu.com generate the embed code from the Issuu publication you want to embed, and find the part where it says "documentID=". There's a long number after that, copy it.
Then "View Source" on this page, and on line 146 you will see the code I used to embed the mag on this page.
If you copy from <div> to </div> then – in theory – you should have exactly the same size mag centered on your page. Replace the number after "documentID" in this code, with your number and voila, it should look like above. Note, there are 2 places in the code snippet where documentID has to be replaced.
Hope that gives you the result you're looking for.
ISSUU.com Isn't Free! They charge per click!
It IS free. Have a read on their About page.
Sweetness! This is exactly what I needed for a client. Thanks for the thorough writeup.
Thank you so much for helping me find this great service. I will be using it for posting to my portfolio site at first, but now that I know about it, I have many more ideas to pursue.
I am soooo excited.
We were looking for an inexpensive solution and the best we found was $150 per month. Not bad comparatively, but this solution is free! Great! Thanks so much for your post!
many many thanks, was getting sick of reading open source forums with unhelpful comments like 'why don't you just send everyone a pdf'
This was well worthwhile. Thanks for the info. The software works great
Thank you, this is what I have been looking for and thanks for sharing.
Thank you very much. As a non-profit any saving is good. This program is great!
Bill Berndtson
Thank you very much! This is exactly what I was looking for, thanks for sharing!
your right it is a nice bit of kit but for those of us that prefer to host the pages on our own site it would be good to know which free or low options are available
This is absolutely stunning. Really a great resource. I have been researching this for days and was about to spend $300 odd to publish my magazine. This is so much better and yes, Free is good.
Great little tip there… It is very easy to use and best of all, free! Thanks! 🙂