The stepping stone from print to online

Previously we had a quick overview of two ways to bring a print document to the Web – the PDF viewer and the content-managed site. Now for a more detailed look, since there are too many companies in this field at this time to list, so for the sake of discussion, any production details following will be from the Zmags DIY process.

We’ll look at the PDF viewer first, since it’s the most ‘print like’ of the two options. There are a few methods that companies are using to bring the content to the Web, and many tout that their viewer replicates the page-turning experience of a printed product.

As you have probably already assumed, the whole process begins with a PDF. Of course this means that the document has to be designed and converted before it ever makes its journey to the Web. This means there’s a cost to get the content to look its best, but if you’re looking at a hybrid solution of traditional printed versions plus digital editions like MAKE did, then the design costs are already part of your production process.

So all of that is nice – but how much does it cost?  Every project is different, but here are some thoughts on the two most common price models.

The most straightforward price model I have seen is the per-document, do-it-yourself (DIY) license. Very simply, you pay a flat rate per document you have online; the more documents you have, the less you pay per document. You handle the creation of the document, uploading, linking, customizing the viewer, etc. You incur a labor cost on your end for doing that work, but because you control it, that cost is generally lower than if the service provider handled those tasks. Also, if you are very particular about the look of your product, doing it yourself gives you direct control over that look, as opposed to handing it off and hoping it comes out right.

The other common model is the service bureau model. This price model is a lot more convoluted and harder to nail down. Here, the service provider handles all the dirty work for you.  You hand off the PDF and they take care of it all… at a price. Generally these are priced per page of content and items like rich media, links and any other extras are charged à la carte. Also, any future edits, changes or page swaps may incur fees. As you can see, this price model might distress those trying to layout a budget. Though the initial creation prices were similar between DIY and service bureaus, any changes could get expensive under the latter. Also, if you want a lot of control over your document, this might not be the model for you. You have to hand off your PDF, supporting art and some instructions to the service provider and let them create your online edition.

Once the PDF is ready, you upload it to the PDF viewer service for processing. It takes a few minutes for their system to go through the PDF and make a searchable index of all the text. This index is important since it’s not just user-searchable in the viewer, but also searchable by Google and other search engines. Once that processing is done, you can put the PDF on the Web for public consumption with just a couple more clicks.

From starting the upload to publishing to the public, you might spend 15 minutes if you’re not using any of the available extras. Such a quick turn is definitely enticing, allowing a minimum time cost and the ability to stick to tight deadlines.

The look and feel of the final product varies a bit from company to company. Many of the companies in the field have developed (Adobe) Flash based page-turners. The best looking of these allow the user to grab the page corners with their mouse, lift it up and peek at the next page, pull it around, etc – like one might do with a real page – making the effort to mimic the real experience as much as possible. Some of the Flash-based page-turners use a more simple click-to-turn interaction with canned page-turn animations and varied levels of adroitness.

Another facet of the PDF viewer is image-based. The service processes your PDF and displays your document as a series of flat images.  Though this isn’t as immersive as the ability to turn pages, its advantage is that it doesn’t need the Flash plug-in to work. The vast majority of people on the Web have the Flash plug-in already but it’s not a given. Also, an important emerging market – iPhone users – cannot view Flash… at least for now. But everyone with a computer, iPhone or BlackBerry can view flat images. So you trade some of the look for the ability to hit a broader audience.

Now, to discuss those extras mentioned earlier. The Zmags system offers a number of ‘canned’ viewer looks and layouts to choose from as part of the creation process or change later on if the mood strikes. If you have an established brand, however, you’ll want to have a custom look. This can be accomplished through the Zmags administration tool. You can create a customized viewer that allows you to tweak colors, background art, button positions and a number of other details to suit your brand, and all these settings can be saved for use in any current or future documents you create.

Some of the other allow the user to create internal and external links, insert rich media and other interactive elements, and offer a comprehensive analytics suite and even e-commerce abilities. Things like analytics, rich media, interactive elements and links are standards for the field; many of the other services share a lot of these features.

Though we’ve covered a lot of information in this article, due to the number of different providers for PDF viewers there’s really no way to give a comprehensive review of them all, or even just a handful of them.  We have an in-house document that explores the main points for just 4 viewers in table form and we had to shrink it to fit on an 11×17 sheet of paper!

We hope this gives you a better idea of what to expect from the page-turner genre.  Next time, it’s the CMS on the block.

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