Show Off Your Publications In A Whole New Way With Online Flip Books
The advent of the e-book has had publishers and authors up in arms for both good and negative reasons. People can see a huge potential in what is being offered by the likes of Amazon with their Kindle and humongous choice of ebooks, Kobo with their cut price, humble e-readers and, of course, the iPad which, amongst everything else it can do, can now allow you to view epub files (Kobo, iPad) and .mobi files (Kindle), if you have the right apps for the job, but others see a negative side, and a love of the tradition of reading, the smell of paper all but disappearing.
Amazon recently reported that they now sell more digital books per quarter than physical ones. Keep in mind that this is now the world’s largest distributor of books, so that’s pretty significant. Many do however argue that ereaders will be the saviour of reading as we know it as, essentially, less and less people were reading anyway and the likes of the Kindle have changed all that by offering a one stop shop where you can get what you need instantly and store thousands of books without having to worry about shelf space.
But if there’s one things that ebooks have done that hasn’t been picked up on quite as much as it possibly should have is to realise the potential of the online book. What I mean by that is a book that is made to be used and read online without the need for a particular device, only virtually any web browser which the vast majority of us these days resoundingly have. Flipping books are the main area where people should be paying attention as not only do they allow quick access to publications, but they do it in a very efficient and beautiful way at the same time. However there is a lot more potential to a flipping book for businesses and for other promotional purposes. It can an effective way to distribute promotional materials which, rather than being screwed up and thrown in the bin like their paper equivalent, look considerably more attractive are much more modern and interactive and almost ask to be played with. Pages on them can be flipped in a variety of ways, pages can be printed, you can zoom in and, perhaps most importantly, they can be shared on social networks and via email.
It is only a matter of time before bigger companies pick up on their potential and start incorporating innovative ideas with their flipping book designs which can be used and enjoyed by tens of thousands of people the web over.
Publications such as The Economist have been doing interesting things via their bi-monthly magazine Intelligent Life by incorporating interactive aspects into the articles such as videos and links to related items, as has the UK free newspaper Metro, who recently won many awards for their innovative applications. There’s a lot more potential in flipping books for smaller businesses and larger businesses alike, they just need to take the time to work out how they can work them to their advantage.