---
title: 'Turn Existing PDFs Into Interactive Digital Flipbooks | Flipsnack Tutorial'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=lI-16FrVp8U'
video_id: 'lI-16FrVp8U'
date: 2026-08-12
duration_sec: 799
---

# Turn Existing PDFs Into Interactive Digital Flipbooks | Flipsnack Tutorial

> Source: [Turn Existing PDFs Into Interactive Digital Flipbooks | Flipsnack Tutorial](https://youtube.com/watch?v=lI-16FrVp8U)

## Summary

This video is a sponsored tutorial by Flipsnack, demonstrating how to transform a static PDF into an interactive digital flipbook. The presenter walks through the entire process, from uploading a PDF to customizing its appearance, adding interactive elements like links and videos, and finally publishing and analyzing the flipbook's performance.

### Key Points

- **Introduction to Flipsnack** [00:00] — The video introduces Flipsnack as a tool for converting PDFs into interactive flipbooks, emphasizing its features like branding, interactivity, collaboration, and performance tracking.
- **Getting Started with Flipsnack** [00:44] — To begin, users can upload a PDF from the homepage and create a free account. Various plans are available for individuals, teams, and enterprises.
- **Real-World Use Cases** [01:14] — Flipsnack showcases examples from small businesses to brands like Estée Lauder and Electrolux, used for catalogs, magazines, brochures, and booklets, highlighting the credibility boost from modern digital formats.
- **Creating a New Flipbook** [02:07] — Users can create a flipbook from scratch or upload an existing PDF. The tutorial demonstrates uploading a PDF file.
- **Customizing Branding and Appearance** [02:34] — Users can customize the flipbook's branding by adding a logo, changing accent colors, and adjusting the background. The appearance tab allows control over page transitions (flip, slide, scroll), page shadows, and menu controls like download/print options.
- **Editing and Updating Content** [04:03] — The edit tab allows replacing the PDF file and republishing, ensuring customers always see the latest version without multiple copies circulating.
- **Add-ons: Accessibility and Lead Forms** [04:18] — Add-ons include Google Analytics integration and accessibility features (AI-generated descriptions for screen readers). The business version supports lead forms to capture emails after a certain page, with options for compliance messages.
- **Design Studio: Adding Interactive Elements** [05:37] — In the design studio, users can add interactive elements like links, videos, slideshows, quizzes, and shopping carts. The tutorial demonstrates adding a link button, embedding a video, and creating a photo slideshow.
- **Sharing and Publishing** [09:24] — Users can set visibility (public, private, unlisted), schedule go-live/expiry dates, share via link, QR code, embed on websites, or email. Trackable links and multiple unique URLs are available for campaign tracking.
- **Analytics and Performance Tracking** [10:56] — The analytics dashboard shows viewer sources, lead responses, time spent per page, and link clicks. This data helps optimize the flipbook by identifying underperforming pages or elements.
- **Managing and Collaborating** [12:15] — Users can re-edit, rename, replace, move to workspaces for team collaboration, or delete flipbooks. The link remains the same when replacing, ensuring everyone sees the updated version.
- **Branding and Custom Domain** [13:02] — Flipsnack allows further branding by moving the flipbook to a custom domain, enhancing brand consistency and polish.

### Conclusion

Flipsnack transforms static PDFs into engaging, interactive digital flipbooks that can be branded, tracked, and shared, ultimately improving customer engagement and business credibility.

## Transcript

Do you currently send your customers, employees,&nbsp; or team PDF files and wish they were a little&nbsp;&nbsp; snazzier and modern? Have you ever wondered if&nbsp; anyone actually reads it? Well, in this video,&nbsp;&nbsp; in partnership with Flipsnack, I'm going to walk&nbsp; you through the only tool since 2011 that lets you&nbsp;&nbsp;
upload, design, brand, add interactivity,&nbsp; collaborate, and track your Flipbook's&nbsp;&nbsp; performance. This gives you the tools you need to&nbsp; know what your customers are actually interested&nbsp;&nbsp; in, worried about, loving, and spending their time&nbsp; looking at. If you ever wanted to modernize your&nbsp;&nbsp;
business or communications, I'm going to show you&nbsp; how with Flipsnack, the most complete flip book&nbsp;&nbsp; maker on the market. Let's get started. To get&nbsp; started, I'm going to head to flipsnack.com. Now,&nbsp;&nbsp;
right away on the homepage, you can upload your&nbsp; PDF to get started, and you'll be prompted to&nbsp;&nbsp; create a free account if you don't already have&nbsp; one. There are different plans you can look at&nbsp;&nbsp; based on your needs. And they do have those plans&nbsp; for individuals and for teams and enterprises.&nbsp;&nbsp;
I'm going to go ahead and go back to the homepage&nbsp; because if I scroll down, I want to show you that&nbsp;&nbsp; if you need some inspiration, this is actually a&nbsp; great way to see some real world use cases. And&nbsp;&nbsp; you can flip through all of these examples all the&nbsp; way from smaller businesses to name brands like&nbsp;&nbsp;
Esteé Lauder and Electrolux. You can flip through&nbsp; and see examples of this in use. for example,&nbsp;&nbsp; as a catalog or a magazine or a brochure in a&nbsp; booklet. Because using a digital flip book is&nbsp;&nbsp;
going to give you more credibility because you're&nbsp; keeping up with the technology and your customers&nbsp;&nbsp; will appreciate you making it easier on them to&nbsp; do business with you. I'm going to go ahead and&nbsp;&nbsp; create a flip book. That's what we're going to&nbsp; do together today. I already have an account,&nbsp;&nbsp;
so I'm going to go ahead and click sign in on the&nbsp; top right hand side of the screen. Now, this is&nbsp;&nbsp; going to take you to the same place it will once&nbsp; you sign up for an account. And you'll see even&nbsp;&nbsp; for larger organizations, you can use single sign&nbsp; on for your employees because flip books also make&nbsp;&nbsp;
fantastic training modules. I'm going to go ahead&nbsp; and click sign in with Google because that's where&nbsp;&nbsp; my account is. And if we're keeping with the puns,&nbsp; I'll catch you on the flip side. Once you sign in,&nbsp;&nbsp; you're brought to the main landing page for your&nbsp; account. And you'll see any and all flip books&nbsp;&nbsp;
that you've already created here along with their&nbsp; status. For example, this one is not published and&nbsp;&nbsp; this one is. We're going to go ahead and create&nbsp; one. So on the top right hand side of the screen,&nbsp;&nbsp; I'll click create. Now I absolutely can create&nbsp; one from scratch, but I already have a PDF file&nbsp;&nbsp;
that I want to convert to a digital flip&nbsp; book. So I'm going to go ahead and select&nbsp;&nbsp; upload files and then browse from my device&nbsp; to find it. I'll select my PDF and click open.
Here is where we can start customizing this flip&nbsp; book. At the top of the screen, I can toggle back&nbsp;&nbsp; and forth between the experience my customers&nbsp; will get, whether they're looking at this on a&nbsp;&nbsp; desktop or a mobile device. At the bottom of the&nbsp; screen, I can navigate quickly through the pages,&nbsp;&nbsp;
or I can also use these arrows on the side. On&nbsp; the left hand side, we might want to update the&nbsp;&nbsp; branding of the flip book. I can add my logo,&nbsp; which will place it in the top lefthand corner&nbsp;&nbsp; of the screen. I can change the accent color. This&nbsp; is the color of the bar across the bottom of the&nbsp;&nbsp;
screen. I might want to change that to match my&nbsp; branding. I can also change the background behind&nbsp;&nbsp; my flip book. And if I don't want to see it at&nbsp; all, I can choose transparent. I'll choose a&nbsp;&nbsp; color. That looks good. And I can also save this&nbsp; option for any future flip books that I create.&nbsp;&nbsp;
But now, let's head to the appearance tab on the&nbsp; left hand side where there's a lot of decisions we&nbsp;&nbsp; can make about how this looks to our customers.&nbsp; I can decide things like page transition. Do I&nbsp;&nbsp; want it to flip? Do I want it to slide? Or do&nbsp; I want it to scroll? I can add page shadows,&nbsp;&nbsp;
which makes it look like an actual book. See what&nbsp; it does in the middle of the screen. I can choose&nbsp;&nbsp; the menu controls, such as allowing the viewer to&nbsp; download this as a PDF or print it. These options&nbsp;&nbsp; can depend on how accessible you want this flip&nbsp; book. Maybe it's training materials that weren't&nbsp;&nbsp;
free versus a sales brochure in which you want&nbsp; it to be available to as many people as possible.&nbsp;&nbsp; Moving to the edit tab, you can completely&nbsp; replace a PDF file and republish a flip book.&nbsp;&nbsp;
If I add products to my catalog after it's been&nbsp; shared to my customers, they will always get the&nbsp;&nbsp; most current version. So, I like that I won't have&nbsp; to have copy after copy of this floating around,&nbsp;&nbsp; not knowing who has the most current one. There&nbsp; will always be the right one that everybody has.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Now, before we go and add some interactions to our&nbsp; flip book, I want to click add-ons right here down&nbsp;&nbsp; on the bottom left hand side. Now, later in this&nbsp; video, we'll track how customers are viewing our&nbsp;&nbsp; flip book, but I can add my own Google Analytics&nbsp; here also. And I'm going to click accessibility.&nbsp;&nbsp;
I'm also going to toggle on use accessibility&nbsp; here to show you that you can use AI to generate&nbsp;&nbsp; descriptions for screen readers or you may already&nbsp; have your own accessible version and you can&nbsp;&nbsp; upload that here as well. There's full support&nbsp; for it. The business version of Flipsnack allows&nbsp;&nbsp;
you to insert a lead form. My flip book might be&nbsp; a training guide or a brochure, but only the first&nbsp;&nbsp; few pages I'm going to give you for free. After&nbsp; that, the customer can enter their email address&nbsp;&nbsp; to get the rest of it. And I can choose what page&nbsp; that occurs on. I'm going to toggle on use lead&nbsp;&nbsp;
form. So, if you're running a leadgen campaign,&nbsp; instead of the entire ebook hidden under that lead&nbsp;&nbsp; form, you can choose to make this free to flip&nbsp; through up to a certain point. I can even add the&nbsp;&nbsp; title if I want. I can edit the submit button text&nbsp; and I can choose what page I want this to occur&nbsp;&nbsp;
on. I'm going to make it on page 5. And if you&nbsp; are in a country that requires certain compliance&nbsp;&nbsp; laws, you can toggle on the required message.&nbsp; Let's hit the back button. I'm going to go&nbsp;&nbsp; back to the edit tab. And now I'm ready to click&nbsp; edit flip book to go into the design studio. I'm&nbsp;&nbsp;
now in design studio. And here's where I can add&nbsp; interactive elements to my flip book. At any time,&nbsp;&nbsp; I could add a new page, duplicate an existing&nbsp; page, or delete one. I can scroll through and see&nbsp;&nbsp;
all the pages in my current flip book. I can also&nbsp; zoom in and zoom out using these buttons down here&nbsp;&nbsp; at the bottom. On the left hand side, I'm going to&nbsp; click interactions. I want to add elements to what&nbsp;&nbsp; I already have on this flip book. I'm going to&nbsp; select a page that I want to add an element to. On&nbsp;&nbsp;
page two, I want to put a link over this text so&nbsp; that viewers can click on it and visit my website.&nbsp;&nbsp; If you scroll through the interactions list, I'm&nbsp; going to see all the things that I can add to this&nbsp;&nbsp; flip book. Things like slideshows, shop carts,&nbsp; embedded objects, engagement things like quizzes&nbsp;&nbsp;
and questions, navigation buttons, social media&nbsp; links, even carts and checkout items. Let's add&nbsp;&nbsp; a link button. The link button appears and now&nbsp; I can stretch it and drag it over where I want&nbsp;&nbsp; that link button to be. I'll put in my URL. It can&nbsp; be anything I want. It can even be a special link&nbsp;&nbsp;
to take viewers somewhere on my website. I can&nbsp; change the tool tip so that when they hover their&nbsp;&nbsp; mouse over it, it says what I want it to say. In&nbsp; this case, I'll tell them where it's going to go.&nbsp;&nbsp; Visit our website to learn more. I can choose&nbsp; whether it opens in a new tab or the same tab.&nbsp;&nbsp;
And all the way on the top right hand side, I'm&nbsp; going to click opacity and I'm going to set this&nbsp;&nbsp; to zero. From here, I'll click preview. And let's&nbsp; take a look at our link. There it is. Visit our&nbsp;&nbsp; website to learn more. I've made this interactive.&nbsp; I'll click the X and this time let's add a video.&nbsp;&nbsp;
I'll find a page that I want to put my video&nbsp; on. This is a great size. I'm going to put a&nbsp;&nbsp; video over this photo to make it more interactive.&nbsp; So, still in the interaction section, I'll click&nbsp;&nbsp; video embed. Here it is. Now, if I did click the&nbsp; wrong thing, I can always click on any element,&nbsp;&nbsp;
rightclick, and choose delete. But in this case,&nbsp; I'm going to resize it so it fits the area that&nbsp;&nbsp; I want my video to go. That looks good. can tweak&nbsp; it a little more. And on the left hand side, I can&nbsp;&nbsp;
either enter a YouTube or Vimeo or my own URL,&nbsp; or I can click to upload a video. In this case,&nbsp;&nbsp; I've already copied one from YouTube, so I'll&nbsp; right-click and choose paste. I can decide what I&nbsp;&nbsp; want that video to do. I do want it to autoplay,&nbsp; and I am going to loop it. If I don't want the&nbsp;&nbsp;
audio to play, I can keep mute selected, which is&nbsp; the default. I can also choose where I want the&nbsp;&nbsp; we can see what that looks like again by clicking&nbsp; preview. Here's my video. That looks great. Click&nbsp;&nbsp;
the X. And by the way, if you want interactive&nbsp; elements, but you don't have your own video,&nbsp;&nbsp; you can always click on elements and browse some&nbsp; stock videos to insert. But let's add one more&nbsp;&nbsp; interactive element. I really want a photo&nbsp; slideshow. So, I'll go back to interactions&nbsp;&nbsp;
and I'll browse to a good page to put a photo&nbsp; slideshow on. This one looks good. that you can&nbsp;&nbsp; see how these different elements are suited for&nbsp; different types of flip books that you can have.&nbsp;&nbsp; For a product catalog, you would want these shop&nbsp; areas in the shopping cart. For a training guide,&nbsp;&nbsp;
that's where you would probably want a quiz or a&nbsp; question. Now, as this is a brochure, I want to&nbsp;&nbsp; focus on making it really eye-catching, thus all&nbsp; the photos and videos. And the nice thing about&nbsp;&nbsp; a slideshow is that I won't need to add pages, so&nbsp; it saves room. I'll click on slideshow, and just&nbsp;&nbsp;
like the video, I get a placeholder. I can click&nbsp; and drag it exactly where I want it on my flip&nbsp;&nbsp; book. Now I can upload some images. I'll click on&nbsp; upload media. I'll add my files. I'll place check&nbsp;&nbsp;
marks next to all three of them. And I'll insert&nbsp; three items. And again, we'll preview it and see&nbsp;&nbsp; how it looks. That looks great. This isn't a&nbsp; flat PDF anymore. We've made it eye-catching&nbsp;&nbsp; and engaging. And later, we can see if people are&nbsp; spending time on this page to know if we need to&nbsp;&nbsp;
make any changes. We're ready to share this out&nbsp; to our customers. I'll click share. Now, I need&nbsp;&nbsp; to decide if this is public, private, or unlisted.&nbsp; Now, this really depends on what type of flip book&nbsp;&nbsp; it is. For example, is it marketing material or is&nbsp; it more private and confidential that is meant to&nbsp;&nbsp;
stay internal. Now, if you click private, you&nbsp; can set the visibility and you can even share&nbsp;&nbsp; this using a company SSO based login. I'm going to&nbsp; leave this one as unlisted so anyone who has the&nbsp;&nbsp; link can view it. I feel like I have more control&nbsp; over it this way, even knowing other people can&nbsp;&nbsp;
send my link around. If I click this down arrow, I&nbsp; can also choose a go live date or even a date that&nbsp;&nbsp; the link won't work anymore. Now, I don't have&nbsp; those constraints, so I'll click publish. There's&nbsp;&nbsp; a lot of ways I can get this into the hands of&nbsp; my customers. The link is right here, and I can&nbsp;&nbsp;
always click to copy it, but on the right hand&nbsp; side, I can share it by a QR code. I think a great&nbsp;&nbsp; use of this is if you're using this as a digital&nbsp; program for a theater or conference. You can print&nbsp;&nbsp; out signs and let your attendees scan it if it's&nbsp; hanging on the wall to see the program. I can also&nbsp;&nbsp;
embed it onto my website or send it via email.&nbsp; All the way at the bottom, I can even include&nbsp;&nbsp; trackable links if I want to trace who is sending&nbsp; it where. And I can even add multiple unique URLs.&nbsp;&nbsp; Maybe I want to share this with different&nbsp; audiences or track certain campaigns. Now,&nbsp;&nbsp;
at the top, that pencil icon is still there. So&nbsp; if I change my mind later and say, I wish I had&nbsp;&nbsp; made that indexable to search engines, I can&nbsp; click this and edit the visibility and change&nbsp;&nbsp; it. Now that it's done, I'll click flip snack&nbsp; on the top left hand side of the screen to get&nbsp;&nbsp;
back to this main dashboard. If I hover my mouse&nbsp; over my flip book, I get some options. The first&nbsp;&nbsp; thing I'm going to do is click analytics. This&nbsp; is my analytics dashboard. Over here on the left,&nbsp;&nbsp; I can navigate through these options. For example,&nbsp; I can see where all of my viewers are coming from.&nbsp;&nbsp;
We put a lead capture form on this. I can click&nbsp; responses and see how many leads and all of them&nbsp;&nbsp; that I've captured. From here, I'm going to go&nbsp; back up to overview. If I scroll down, I can&nbsp;&nbsp; see all sorts of data, including how long they've&nbsp; spent on each page. This is useful to me because&nbsp;&nbsp;
if I look and see that they aren't visiting a&nbsp; page or aren't spending a lot of time on a page,&nbsp;&nbsp; that tells me that I either need to update it or&nbsp; get rid of it because it could cost me viewers&nbsp;&nbsp; if they close out of it on that page. I can even&nbsp; see if they're clicking on my links on the page.&nbsp;&nbsp;
For example, I know on page two we put a link and&nbsp; I can see here that they aren't indeed clicking&nbsp;&nbsp; on it. If no one's clicking it, I can go in and&nbsp; edit this to do a better job of making it visible.&nbsp;&nbsp; Maybe they just aren't seeing it. So, that's&nbsp; why knowing all of this information can help&nbsp;&nbsp;
me make a better flip book. I'll click the flip&nbsp; snack icon again to go back to the main view of&nbsp;&nbsp; all my flip books. At any time, I can click to&nbsp; re-edit, customize this. I can go back into the&nbsp;&nbsp; analytics. I can share it. And if I click on the&nbsp; three dots, I can do things like rename it. And I&nbsp;&nbsp;
can also replace it with a brand new version. And&nbsp; remember, the link stays the same. So everybody&nbsp;&nbsp; will see the new version. I can move it to a&nbsp; workspace. Maybe I want to bring in my team&nbsp;&nbsp; to collaborate on this. Maybe I want the whole&nbsp; marketing department in here or even legal to take&nbsp;&nbsp;
a look at it first. And finally, I can move this&nbsp; to the trash and repeat the process and create a&nbsp;&nbsp; new one at any time by clicking create again here&nbsp; at the top right hand side of the screen. I think&nbsp;&nbsp; this came out great. Flipsnack has been around&nbsp; since 2011 and I'm finally in the modern era with&nbsp;&nbsp;
a real flip book that lives entirely as part of&nbsp; my brand and all that from one flat existing PDF&nbsp;&nbsp; file that started it all. In fact, down here&nbsp; on the bottom left hand side of the screen,&nbsp;&nbsp; I can take this further. If I click brand, I can&nbsp; go into settings and I can even move this to my&nbsp;&nbsp;
own custom domain. I'm confident that my customers&nbsp; will respond well to this and as it reflects that&nbsp;&nbsp; my business also looks polished and updated,&nbsp; this is going to lead to real conversions. If&nbsp;&nbsp; you want to modernize your PDFs, try it for free&nbsp; on flipsnack.com. The link is in the description.