New Flip Book with Hyperlinks

Thrilled to be part of the Check Advantage Family!

This post has 2 parts.

Part 1. DOING the Happy Dance! Check Advantage licensed several of my images / designs! WOOP!

(To purchase Checks, Covers and Labels click an image in the flip book or click here: https://www.checkadvantage.com/ann-troe)

Part 2. You've been asking about how do I create hyperlinks in a flip book. I will give you the gist of how I did it using InDesign CS6 - note: if you use Microsoft Word - Go to Flipsnack's FAQ (http://www.flipsnack.com/faq/) for the work around - The PDF you generate from Word doesn't have web compatible colors and won't work.

Set up your pages in InDesign. Click on an image or text frame you want to ad a hyperlink to.
Go to the file menu at the top - under "Window" scroll down to "Interactive", choose "Hyperlinks".
Put in the URL you want it to link to. That's it! Here is a link to Adobe.com if you need a little more help or a visual http://help.adobe.com/en_US/indesign/cs/using

NOTE: The yellow square with FREE Shipping on each page is an interactive button that I set up in InDesign - they do not work in the flip book. If you know or figure out how to make that work - let me know! It may just be that it isn't compatible with Flipsnack. http://www.flipsnack.com/

WHY do I bother to set up a flip book when I could just link to a PDF file? I get more viewers, better SEO - and it's fun :-D Since June 30 2013, when I posted my flip book portfolio it has had 1,094  Unique viewers. That number is a combination of my website, blog & flipsnack page. 690 views are from the flipsnack page! With a paid flipbook - they submit it to search engines, pin it, etc.

You might also like this post about my Flip book Portfolio http://annietroe.blogspot.com/2013/07/flipbook-portfolio.html

THANKS for reading & commenting!

Flip book Portfolio

Click here to see my portfolio on my website - also you can click the bold words in the post below to visit more links.

FlipSnack, One of the Many Free Aps from SnackTools

In my post last week on palette knife painitng and art licensing, I included a link to my portfolio. This generated questions about how I made my portfolio into a flip book.

I have used some of SnackTools aps and widgets in the past for some of my graphic design clients. I forgot about FlipSnack for creating flip books, until I heard Leslie Saeta talking about it for her flip book portfolio on her radio show "Artists Helping Artists".

FlipSnack is free up to 15 pages and I believe the free version has a small add/watermark on it. I paid $20 (10 points) to get more pages (up to 500) and no ad. There is also a subscription service if you want to make more than three flip books and or change your flipbook frequently. I plan on changing mine just twice a year, so I went with the flat fee.

It was very easy for me to set up. I already have my portfolio in InDesign and just saved it as a low resolution PDF file. NOTE: If you are using Microsoft Word - you may want to test uploading a single PDF file - I am guessing that you will need to use other software to generate the PDF.

If you can save it as a PDF/x file - It will help it run smoother. I read this in the FAQ after I had already uploaded the file :-(

It seems to run decently on my html5 website and pretty good on the iPad.

Hope this helps answer your questions! 

You might also like this post - New flip book with hyper links: http://annietroe.blogspot.com/2013/09/new-flip-book-with-hyperlinks.html

How I Found an Agent

 

Synopsis - update May 27th, 2014

After Surtex (art licensing show in NYC) I have been asked a few times how I found an agent. Here is the skinny:

Several years ago I found I had more time for creating images and set up my Annie's Doodlebugz store on CafePress. Note: the store is closed. I wasn't adding new content to it anymore).  The store got me thinking more about art for products.

Couple years ago (maybe two) I started setting up an art licensing portfolio, reading art licensing blogs, listening to Tara Reed's (now Art Licensing Info) FREE! "Ask Calls" and joined a few related Linkedin groups. I wasn't in any rush. I have a graphic design business going on 16+ years & love that just as much as art for licensing.

A book that I used with great tips, tools AND confirmed I was on the right track is Tara Reed's (now Art Licensing Info) "How to Find and Art Licening Agent".  

Next I set up an art licensing website and generated a list of agents I wanted to contact and thought my art would be a fit for them. (If you need help with a website, feel free to contact me anntroe@cox.net). I contacted my top 20 agents one by one. They all had submission guidelines on their websites. I think all of them wanted a brief email and just a few samples. Tara's book above even helps you with what to say :-) I tracked who I had contacted and what I sent them - just in case they would call! I was very please that several of them took the time to tell me no thank you. It was nice to know. Two agents very graciously reviewed my portfolio - even though they were not interested.

One of the resources I used to generate a list of agents is on Joan Beiriger's Blog you can google more. "List of Over 50 U.S. Art Licensing Agencies"

I was in the process of generating a second contact list when I saw Parcai Designs post on a Linkedin group. I checked them out and sent a submission to them. The rest as they say is history.

You might also like reading my short post on Contracts, Lawyers - Oh My!

For more helpful links check out my Useful Stuff blog page.

Editor's note: this article originally posted June 21, 2013. Updated May 27, 2104. You might like the companion post "WHY I have an Art Licensing Agent".

Thanks for reading and commenting!