Mastering Digital Magazines: From PDFs to Publication

As a business or an educational enterprise, it is important to find innovative ways to keep your audience or learners engaged. Digital magazines are an excellent way to achieve that. Not only do they allow you to connect with your audience directly, but they also provide an opportunity to communicate about your brand’s initiatives towards a cause.

Digital magazines are, in fact, more than just a mode of communication; they can easily become the voice of your institution. You can use these publications to establish a steady channel of news and other announcements for your audience.

In this blog, let’s learn the 10 simple steps involved in creating digital magazines that are not just engaging but impactful as well.

Table of Contents

I. What is a Digital Magazine?

II. Are People Still Reading Digital Magazines?

III. 10 Steps to Master Creating Digital Magazines

• Set a Goal
• Use The Right Platform
• Set a Theme
• Develop a Content Strategy
• Create the Content
• Edit and Proofread
• Develop Visual Elements
• Select the Template
• Design a Cover
• Publish

IV. KITABOO: From PDF to Publication

Digital magazines are publications that brands use to communicate with their audience. They are not meant to be published as marketing or promotional material – but rather to entertain or inform the target audience.

As opposed to the digital magazines that existed in the first generation, these publications today are much more interactive, visual, and evolved. It takes special software to create digital magazines that deliver high engagement rates and responsive interfaces to suit a wide variety of devices.

Digital magazines may sound counterproductive toward marketing initiatives, but the truth is that prioritizing information delivery rather than sales messages helps build credibility.

When planning your content strategy, you may be faced with the inevitable question of whether or not magazines are still relevant. With so much content available online through social media and other channels, are people really reading digital magazines?

Numbers say that the market for digital magazines is rapidly growing, and is estimated to reach a market value of $45.75 billion by 2028. This is a promising value that emphasizes the importance of capitalizing on this opportunity to connect with your audience.

Customers today display little patience for sales-y messages and promotional communications. However, when it comes to getting information about a brand, its activities, and its product line, there is an opportunity to generate engagement through creating digital magazines.

The best part about PDF magazines is that they are easily accessible, even if your audience does not have an eReader installed. Discussed below are ten crucial but simple steps you can use to create engaging and visually stunning magazine publications using PDF formats:

In the first step, gather all the stakeholders and deliberate on the goals that the PDF magazine is expected to achieve.

For example, what would be the charge for the magazine? Is your business planning to make it available only to paying members? You may also need to work on the publication schedule for the magazine.

It is crucial to select the right digital publishing platform (like KITABOO) for creating digital magazines from PDF files. The tools and features available at your disposal determine several important factors. They control whether the PDF magazine would be responsive, whether the platform can provide interactivity tools for PDF files, and whether it can be protected for IP rights with the proper licenses.

When setting the theme of your publication, it is important to address the questions that your target audience is asking your brand. For example, it could be about your CSR initiatives, or about innovation and sustainability. You need to base your digital magazine around these topics to create maximum engagement.

Creating a content strategy is like developing a blueprint for the topics you will be covering under the theme selected for the magazine. It also involves scheduling your content and synchronizing it with your publication timeline so that every aspect of this workflow stays on track.

When creating the content for the magazine, consider onboarding a few subject matter experts for each issue. It helps give more credibility and authority to your brand. Do keep in mind that PDFs tend to be heavier compared to ePUB, so the content needs to be optimized for web size.

Alternatively, you can outsource this work to professional writers as well.

Editing and proofreading are essential publication processes that make your content richer, more readable, and more impactful. It also identifies any rendering errors that may sometimes come into PDF files; it is important to address them before getting the magazine published.

In parallel to writing the content for your digital magazine, also work on the graphics that will support this text-based content. This also involves working on creating videos, audio, animations, gamified elements, interactive elements, etc., to add to your PDF magazine. You may require a dedicated media optimization tool to keep the final PDF size manageable.

You now need to select the most suitable PDF magazine template from the library of the software you are using. Templates make the work of assembling your content easy, and reduce the turnaround time of creating digital magazines. Once the template is selected, all that remains is to populate the placeholders with respective content.

The most important part of your magazine is its cover – because people do judge a book by it. You can consider hiring professional designers to create a captivating cover for your magazine with brand colors and fonts. You can choose multiple color palettes for different issues as long as they are a part of your brand.

The final stage is converting your digital magazine from PDF into a publication. Using the software or platform you have selected, this can be achieved within a single click. You can even schedule the publication for a later date.

Digital magazines are still popular, and they would continue to amaze the readers in more innovative ways. The trick of the trade lies in speeding up the turnaround times from PDF to publication, which needs specialized solutions that can make it happen.

Using the KITABOO digital textbook platform, achieving this is easy. The platform provides a robust set of features to the creators that enable them to enrich PDF magazines, features to add media and interactivity to files, modify the layout and structure, proofread and edit the text, and achieve much more with the digital magazine.

To understand how KITABOO can transform the process of creating digital magazines, visit the website.