Parents' Guide to

FlipSnack

By Erin Brereton, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 16+

Potentially pricey online book-design tool neat but limited.

Website http://www.flipsnack.com
FlipSnack Poster Image

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What you will—and won't—find in this website.

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age 18+

Based on 1 parent review

Rj K.
Rj K. Adult
January 15, 2018
age 18+

OH MY GOSH!

Oh My Gosh! I signed up for their free online digital flipbook maker. Here I began to design my e-magazine for my non-profit company. Their system kept saving my data as I worked. After numerous hours developing the cover page and internal pages, I signed out. I went back in and could not find my work. I chatted with the rep online and they stated that I could not recover it and that is was gone. WHAT????? What a HOAX! She stated that I had to publish it to save it. How can you publish something when it is not ready to be published but rather saved until it is ready to be published. The system does NOT alert you to the fact that you HAVE to PUBLISH in order to save your work! It shows a "saved" mark at the top left that indicates your work is saved, BUT it is NOT! BAD DESIGN. Difficult to navigate and build flipbook. DON'T take a chance on using your valuable business time and losing your work! UNSAT! UNACCEPTABLE!
See all 1 parent review

What’s It About?

Kids can use FLIPSNACK to make and share books. Setup should be fairly easy; you give the book a name and description, upload or drag-and-drop precreated JPG or PDF files, add comments, customize the cover color and texture, background color, and other elements, and then publish. However, the tool doesn't include an overview of the instructions, and its limitations are somewhat unclear at first. To share a book, users can send a dedicated link or share it via email or a social media site. They also can view select user-created books or enter search terms to find books on specific topics.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say: (1):
Kids say: Not yet rated
FlipSnack bills itself as a way to create interactive online books. Users can upload PDF or JPG files, customize a few elements, such as the background and cover, and create nice-looking digital books with pages that turn when you click on them. The site has a lot of potential, but it also has some fairly big flaws. The book-creation tool can be confusing to use; aside from a FAQ, there isn't much instruction (though a 24/7 chat option can help clear up major questions). Process steps include brief descriptions but don't mention some potentially frustrating issues, including the fact that users can't create books with written content and images unless they design them offline, using another program, and then upload those PDFs into the FlipSnack tool. Also, the free version falls short of creating truly interactive digital books: You can't include music or videos, and users have to be logged in to Facebook to comment on the work. Free books must be 15 pages or less; you can only embed three, which will contain a watermark; and final versions can't be downloaded to your desktop unless you have a paid subscription or buy at least 10 points, which cost $19. Those constraints place some serious restrictions on kids' creativity -- and, ultimately, may inhibit their ability to use the site.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about how different formats help tell stories. Can your child identify the difference between stories that are verbally told, written, or told in a picture book?

  • Ask your child how using both words and images can help explain something better that only text. Can your child think of any examples?

  • Users can sign in to FlipSnack using Facebook. What kinds of issues could arise from posting books you've created publicly? Use our Social Network Tips as a guide to control privacy settings on sites like Facebook.

Website Details

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