Thursday, May 30, 2013

Pdf Publishing: Options! Give me options!

EDIT 2021: The header for this blog post was a Flash "book case" of TrekUnited books in Issuu. Flash is no9 longer supported by modern browsers and so it is now dead. A pity because it was a really intuitive way of promoting and making available pdf publications. This post was updated in 2015 and deserves to be updated again.

Pdf Publishing: so you have a great looking book you want everyone to read, how do you put it online? Most people just have it as a link to a downloadable file. That works - its simple and it gets the job done - but it doesn't let people browse your work before they download it.

This is what we have been using to date, that's an example embedded above, is Issuu, however they are putting a lot more weight behind their paid service and limiting their free features... www.issuu.com/TrekUnited
July 2015: Limited free service but they've added a rather good Facebook app.

Scribd is a long-running social publishing site for sharing original writings and documents in various formats, for private or public viewing, in four Languages along with a commercial store. I note that S&S are using Scribd for advance copy. http://www.scribd.com
July 2015: Scribd is no longer free for readers which creates a problem for fan fiction

DeviantArt, the bastion of amateur art, has a pdf publishing plugin 'scroller' much the same as the one in Scribd. The major value of using DeviantArt is the community, you have a captive, supportive audience here! TrekUnited Publishing has a group here at... http://tu-publishing.deviantart.com/
July 2015: Still a good solid performer

Yumpu is closest in looks to Issuu with flipping documents that they say you can create in only 2 minutes, one click Facebook integration along with Twitter, Linked In, Google+ and Pinterest. German focus but international distribution... http://www.yumpu.com/
July 2015: Still seems good value

SlideShare is the world's largest community for sharing presentations but also also supports documents, PDFs, videos and webinars. With 60 million monthly visitors and 130 million pageviews, it is amongst the most visited 200 websites in the world. Focused more on the real world than fiction! http://www.slideshare.net
July 2015: Still free but of little use for publishing fiction

Joomag sounds like it has a number of features that Issuu doesn't such as Video & Audio (Issuu actually does support audio), a Photo Gallery, Popups and an iPad app. This one bears looking into! http://www.joomag.com
July 2015: the free option seems to be unlimited and ad sponsored 

Zyyne is an online platform that boosts your publications : they are more vivid, easier to disseminate and can be read on any medium. A powerful analysis tool allows you to see who has read them and how. http://www.zyyne.com/site/en/
July 2015: The fact that they offer a thirty day trial suggests this is a commercial platform

MegaZine3, a powerful, userfriendly, open source ActionScript3 based page flip engine. http://www.megazine3.de/
July 2015: They seem to be morphing into a commercial platform