How to Create a Simple eMagazine

I want to share with you how to create a simple eMagazine. An eMagazine is really an eBook. The difference for us is, as a Real Estate company, ours includes our latest homes for sale and property listings.

And so, to start, you need to have some kind of layout / content idea (obviously). We just reproduced our print magazine using Microsoft Publisher. Each page was created separately. The cover page was just a picture one of our agents took while climbing Half Dome. Add text, listing pictures, align, proofread, proofread again and you have the Publisher side of doing things completed. (Expect a number of hours in the process of that last sentence.)

At this point you go print each Publisher document to a PDF file. We use PDF995. The next step is to combine the PDF files into one. We use the merge PDF function at: FoxyUtils for that.

The last steps include uploading the combined PDF (eMagazine!) somewhere on the web so it's accessible. Dropbox.com is cool to use for this because they allow for a Public Folder that assigns urls (web addresses) to each file. This url (web address) can be used to promote your eMagazine online. (Scribd.com is another hosting site where you can place your eMagazine and get a url ~ and embed code, too!)

At this point you could add bells and whistles like: Make the phone numbers active links that can be dialed on mobile devices. (We use Acrobat Writer to do that.) You could also create a QR (quick response) code that points to the eMagazine and include it in your print media. (We do that, too.)

It's really fun creating an eMagazine. (To see our completed eMagazine plus QR code, click here.) I hope this info was helpful to you as you make your own. :)

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