Digital magazine maker that keeps the spread intact

The spread is the point. You set the pull quote opposite the photograph, and neither half works alone. Then the issue goes out as a PDF, a reader opens it in a preview pane on a phone, and a week of layout arrives at thumbnail size. i3Dify renders the same file as a 3D flipbook, with the facing pages still facing.

Facing pages survive the browser in a flipbook

In print you never had to defend fixed layout. On the web the default is a viewer that reflows the page into a scroll and quietly deletes the relationship you designed. A flipbook keeps the sheet whole. Pages sit as a bound book with a spine, the sheet curls as it turns, and the pages either side of the current one are loaded ahead so the turn does not stall on a phone.

Readers page through by tapping the left or right edge of the page, swiping on a phone, or using the arrow keys, and Home and End jump to the cover and the back page. The cover does the job it did on a newsstand: it is the preview image everywhere the link gets pasted. Contents pages and page numbers start meaning something again, because the reader is moving between pages rather than down one.

Most readers open the issue on a phone, so lay out for the phone

A page set at A4 with 9pt body copy is a page nobody reads on a phone without pinching. That is fixed at layout time, not at upload time.

• Body copy at 12 to 14pt at final page size: the 9 or 10pt print convention is legible in the hand and gone on a screen.
• Single column on the text pages: three columns at phone width costs the reader three pinch and pan trips per page.
• High contrast type: grey on off-white looks refined on paper and disappears outdoors in daylight.
• Single pages on export, not spreads: a spread export halves the size of every word unless that spread was designed as one image.

The archive is what people actually subscribe to

One issue is a link. Twelve issues on stable URLs, with one index page on your own site collecting them, is a publication. Back issues keep getting opened long after launch week, and they are usually what convinces a new reader to wait for the next one. Each issue can be embedded in that index page rather than only linked from it, so the archive reads as a shelf.

The free plan holds 3 projects and 50 MB, which covers a current issue and two back numbers, and the i3Dify pill stays on the viewer. Pro is 3 dollars a month, removes the branding and removes the project cap. Publish on a cadence you can keep. Quarterly and reliable builds a readership that monthly and abandoned never will.

There is no per-reader paywall, so sell around the link

Anyone holding the URL has the issue. That rules out a subscriber wall on the page itself, and rules in three models that fit the format. Full-page advertising is the native unit here, because an ad is a page like every other page. Sponsorship of a whole issue is easier to sell than page-by-page inventory at small scale. Paid access works by gating the link instead: take the money on Gumroad, Ko-fi or Patreon, set the project to unlisted, and send buyers the URL.

Analytics is a Pro feature, and its heatmaps tab shows how many times each page was opened and how long it held attention. That is a sponsor report print could never produce.

Page text ships as an image, so publish one article as HTML

The issue URL is indexable and carries the issue title, but the words inside the pages are pixels. No article in the flipbook will bring you search traffic on its own. Publish one or two pieces per issue as ordinary web pages and let the flipbook be the issue.

Publish your issue as a digital magazine.