Sell or protect a flipbook: preview pages, members-only issues and WooCommerce

Not every publication should be free to read. A magazine wants subscribers, a training company wants enrolled students, a wholesaler keeps its price list for trade customers. A flipbook can do all of that while still showing a sample to everyone else, which is usually what turns a visitor into a buyer.

There are three building blocks, and most setups use one or two of them.

1. Preview pages for logged-out visitors

The Preview Mode addon adds two settings to a flipbook:

• Who sees the preview: nobody, or visitors who are not logged in.
• How many pages: the number of pages they can read before the preview ends.

Logged-in readers always get the whole publication. Because one flipbook serves both audiences, there is no second “sample” version to keep in sync when the issue changes.

Here is what a visitor sees with a five-page preview. Open the catalog and turn past page 5:

Good for membership sites with premium issues, magazines that offer a sample before the subscription, course material for enrolled students, and catalogs whose price pages are for registered customers only.

Pick the preview length deliberately. Three or four pages of a magazine show its quality; a catalog is better served by the full range pages and a gate on the price list.

2. Selling through WooCommerce

The WooCommerce addon connects flipbooks to products:

• On the product page, the flipbook opens in a lightbox when the shopper clicks the product image, or any element you give a CSS class.
• Before and after purchase, you assign one flipbook for visitors who have not bought the product and another for those who have. A sample for everyone, the full edition for buyers, chosen automatically.
• Subscriptions work the same way: an active subscription unlocks the publications tied to it, which adds something tangible to a recurring plan.
• My Account lists everything a customer has bought, so they can come back and read it again without searching their email for a download link.

Compared with selling a PDF download, the customer reads on your site, on any device, and the file is not passed around as an attachment.

3. Keep the original PDF private

A gate only helps if the full file is not sitting at a public address. The PDF Tools addon converts the PDF into page images and a JSON file on your server. After conversion you can delete the original PDF: readers get the pages, not the file. Links, text search and text selection keep working.

Two more settings are worth checking on gated flipbooks:

• Hide the download button, unless buyers should also get the file.
• Turn off printing if the content should stay on screen.

Putting it together

All three are part of the addons bundle, together with the page editor, bookshelf and page-builder widgets.

Comparing plugins? Our guide to the best flipbook plugins for WordPress puts prices and features side by side.