What is a flipbook?

Flipbooks, sometimes referred to as "digital flipbooks," bring the look and feel of print publications into the new, digital world. With interactive, tactile page flipping, and multimedia embeds, you can customize how readers experience your magazine, brochure, or book in a digital format.

You can find some examples of flipbooks here. You’ll see several types of flipbooks in these examples – a magazine, a virtual tour, a catalog, and a front-and-back brochure – but the possibilities of what you can create are truly endless for this largely unexplored digital medium.

Flipbooks are used to showcase content in a more hands-on way. We’ve seen them embedded in everything from a simple landing page, personal portfolios, or even Shopify sites! Digital flipbooks are a surprisingly easy way of adding more depth to any page and inviting visitors to engage more with your site.

Why would you want to make a flipbook?

Did you know that around 250,000 new websites are created every day? It’s getting more and more difficult to stand out and provide real value on the internet.

Flipbooks are a special type of media that is still largely unexplored in today’s online world! A digital flipbook is that special something on your website that makes you stand out. It can provide real value without even making visitors leave the page and will likely improve overall engagement and conversion rates.

The best thing about making a digital flipbook is that you can just create a PDF and quickly turn it into a flipbook with our PDF To Flipbook Converter.

How can you make your own digital flipbook?

The simplest way to create a digital flipbook of your own is to start with a PDF file, export the PDF, and then convert it from a PDF to a digital flipbook.

1. Create or export a PDF file

There are several ways to end up with a great initial PDF file. You can use software specifically for creating PDFs, such as PDFElement or Adobe’s Acrobat Pro. The benefit of software like this is that it’s easy to work with the format and multimedia embed options when the software was made to create PDFs in particular.

However, another option is just to use a standard document writing software like Google Docs or Microsoft Word. Almost every well-known writing software these days has a handful of export options, which usually include PDF documents. With Google Docs, it’s as simple as clicking File → Download→ PDF Document (.pdf).

But each software is slightly different in the language it uses, so generally look for options to “download,” “export as,” or “save as” in the top menu.

Another option is to use Canva to directly create a Canva flipbook or, again, export it as a PDF. The nice thing about Canva is that it has many templates to start with a great-looking professional design. But what about the text content? To help you with your writing, a good option for getting ideas and making the research easy is to use Copy.ai or one of the many AI story generators out there. These tools will give you a good push to get started and you'll just need to add the creativity and your unique touch.

2. Convert your PDF file into a Digital Flipbook

Now that you already have the content you want in your flipbook, it’s time for the easy (and fun) part. The conversion process is super straightforward, using the Heyzine PDF To Flipbook Converter.

Go to heyzine.com and either drag and drop your PDF file or just click “Upload”. You’ll be able to get started and see how your flipbook looks immediately, without even creating an account!

You can add a title and subtitle, then select a “page effect.” Page effects are the style of digital flipbook that you’ll end up with. You can select anything from magazine to slider to coverflow. Whatever you choose, you’ll have the same ability to customize and share your flipbook.

Go ahead and click Customize to see the Heyzine Flipbook Editor! This is where you can enhance your new flipbook with video, clickable links, pagination, audio, a background image, and way more. Because you started with a PDF that already got you close to the finished flipbook you wanted, these touches are just the icing on the cake.

3. Share your flipbook

Once you’re happy with the final product, make sure to click Save Changes in the top-left corner of the editor. You’ll then be able to click Share and choose how you’d like to use your very first flipbook!

We have options to copy a full-page link, download your flipbook, or even embed the flipbook on your own website. We recommend embedding in your website to bring this unique experience front and center with your website’s visitors.

Now that you’ve saved and shared your flipbook, you can come back any time to make further changes and continue enhancing the flipbook experience.

You’re a flipbook pro!

You’ve created your first flipbook and started sharing it with your audience. Nice work! If you want to continue improving your flipbooks, you should experiment with more flipbook formats (try out the Slider style for example), ways to distribute your flipbook content, and learn more about advanced editing options to take your flippingbooks to the next level!

If you have any questions about digital flipbooks or our software specifically, please feel free to reach out any time!