How does Issuu work?

Basically rather than sending your content to traditional publisher for publishing and printing out hard copies, you can send your content to Flipsnack or YUMPU Publishing, to publish your Issuu publications digitally in the realm of the internet. Other benefits of publishing your own flipbook? With a software like YUMPU Publishing you get a ton of great benefits for free!

Table of contents:

• What is Issuu?

• How does Issuu work?

• Features

• Issuu Pros

• Issuu cons

What is Issuu?

Issuu is one of the leading digital publishing platforms. It allows you to create your own digital publication and distribute it. If you are not interested into publishing, you can read and find a great ton of magazines on the platform. Same as with other Issuu competitors.

But now to the most important question:

How does Issuu work?

Well, as previously mentioned, it allows you to create online content including magazines, publications, catalogues, books and the like by uploading PDF files. You do not need to worry about whether is Issuu legal. (If you would not have already guessed it: Issuu is legal - so continue reading to find out how Issuu works).

Issuu, a Joomag alternative, will simply take those PDF files and convert them into flash readable content publications.

By posting your magazines online, you are able to reach a much wider audience, and with billions of people going online daily, there are endless opportunities of growth.

Issuu has come a long way since its humble beginnings in 2006. Currently, it boasts more than 100 million unique visitors per month.

A lot of people ask: Is Issuu free for readers?

Yes, it is free for readers.  But it offers 4 different plans & Issuu pricing for publisher who want to publish magazines and thats how does issuu make money.
You can pay setup your billing to be either monthly or annually.

For annual payments, they offer discounts as well.  

You start off with the Basic Plan that is free of charge. In this plan, you get to upload, embed and share your media.

Features

The core features provided by Issuu include:

• Unlimited Publishing: Using Issuu allows you to publish as many publications / magazines you want, there is no limit on the number of publications. However, there is a limit on the size and no. of pages of each publication.

• Embedded Reader: With a few lines of code, you can embed your publication on any other website.

• HTML5 Reader: With the HTML5 reader how does Issuu work is that your subscribers can view your publication directly in their browsers, they do not need to install any separate Issuu app for this.

• Native Apps: along with HTML5 reader, Issuu have also launched native apps for iOS and Android. But here a lot of users wonder how to use issuu app.

• Analytics: Gives you the power to view your users’ engagement with your publishing, identify page views and areas for improvement, and come to know what content is currently popular with your readers.

• Sharing: We all love to share on social platforms. You can do the same with your publication. You just have to make sure you are getting your publication ready, to easily share it with leading social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and co., in a matter of few clicks. You just have to log into your social media account. For more details about how to share your digital publications with the public – please check our article  related “WordPress Issuu plugin to share publications“.

The following two points go a little bit deeper into the Issuu pros and cons.

Issuu Pros

Issuu makes it very easy for you to share your magazines on all the leading social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Google+, and LinkedIn.
For further details on how to share your publications/magazines or whether to use the WordPress Plugin for embedding it into your website, have a look at our other articles.

Issuu provides a fast and easy way to upload PDF files and transform them to an digital page flip publication. The converted magazine feature fluid zoom-in and zoom-out and page turning animations.Although the analytics and user engagement information provided are not free, they provide valuable insights into the readers reading patterns and their reading experience.

Like which pages are being read the most, how much time readers are spending on a particular page and much more. This information is crucial for knowing what content your readers like, and what content not so much.

Issuu cons

One of the aspects the platform lags in, is the Issuu help center or in other words the customer help & support services.  

We see many people complaining about slow or non-responsive support.

I believe with the sheer amount of clients; it is becoming difficult for its support to coup up.

Issuu needs to expand its  team proportionally related to its overall growth.

Issuu does not allow you to use embed audio or video into your pulications, these features are provided by Issuu competitors like YUMPU Publishing or Joomag.

Issuu puts a limit of uploading a PDF of maximum 500MB. Also your publication can not be longer than 500 pages.  

The issuu free alternative Joomag or other   related Joomag competitors allow you to upload unlimited pages.

I definitely suggest that you take a look at Issuu and other Flipsnack alternatives to find out which software is most appropriate for you. My personal favorite is YUMPU Publishing.

You might not immediately find the best publisher platform to use for your purposes but there are many other  related sites like Issuu.

However, it is surely the most widely used publisher platform and the features offered are quite ok (for a monthly fee).

All plans come with the 14 day free trial, so you can get a feel for all the features provided by Issuu without having to pay anything.

If after using the platform you are comfortable with it, you can go ahead and buy one of the plans that fits your needs best.

I hope you found this article helpful and that I could answer at least some of your questions about how does Issuu work.

If you need any further help & support or would like to see other realted articles to this topic, feel free to get in contact.