There are two popular services for hosting PDFs online where they can be viewed and flipped through easily.
One is called Scribd (pronounced “scribed”) and the other is Issuu (pronounced “issue”). Both allow you to share content and embed it into a blog or website.
I’ve used both and tend to like the quality of the Issuu viewer better.
This is a terrific way to share a sketchbook online, to make a publication available to more viewers, to emulate the act of flipping pages in a digital environment.
Here’s a sample:
- Sign up:
So the first thing to do is start an account with Issuu.
You can use your facebook, linkedin or Google account to sign up. - Upload your document:
Issuu accepts only PDF content. It’s a good idea that you check the size of your PDF as well. If anything will give a service like this trouble its going to be a big complicated PDF.
Also, be sure to save a version of the PDF without crop marks if you’ve used them for printing purposes. - Grab the Embed code of the PDF from Issuu
Once the document is uploaded, view it, make sure it looks ok and then grab the embed code to include it on the blog.
You can also tweak the way the embedded player looks, choosing a size, color, etc.
- Paste the embed code in your blog post
- Create a new post In WordPress (give it a good title, add it to the right category)
- In the post editing window, you need to switch from VISUAL which is the default, to TEXT which allows you to add embed code.
- Paste the embed code in!
- Switch back to visual
- Publish your blog post!
The book should now appear in your blog post.
