Ask MagCloud: Upload & Publish

You can publish your publication on MagCloud without offering it for sale to the general public. When you Publish, just set the privacy to Unlisted (it is set to Listed by default). You can also change this at any time by clicking Edit Publication on your My Projects page or from the publication page.

If you wish to allow only selected people to see and purchase your MagCloud publication, you can set the visibility of your publication to Unlisted and use our Guest Pass feature to share with others. This will generate a special URL that will grant access to your unlisted publication for anyone who receives it.

To send a Guest Pass, go to the publication page of an unlisted publication you own and click the Share link in the blue Publisher Tools toolbar. Enter up to 5 email addresses for the people you want to grant access to, click Preview Email, then click Send Message. Each recipient will receive an email from MagCloud with a unique URL that allows them to view and purchase your publication. You can repeat this process as many times as you want to grant access to any number of people.

To disable a Guest Pass, click on the Account link at the top of any page on the MagCloud website, and then select the Permissions tab. You will see a list of Sharing URLs at the bottom of the page, with the option to Show URL or Revoke next to each one.

When sales are on, people other than you can purchase the magazine, either through the MagCloud site (Listed publications) or a Guest Pass (Unlisted publications). When sales are off, only the publisher can purchase copies from the Publication Tools menu on their My Projects page.

To turn sales on or off, first click the My Projects link at the top of the page. To turn sales on, click "Enable Sales and Distribution" below the publication title. To turn sales off, click the "Edit Publication" button and select the radio button for "Sales Off".

Listed publications appear on the MagCloud website in the Shop tab, and can be searched for and purchased by anyone. Unlisted publications are only visible to and available for purchase by the publisher, and anyone that the publisher shares a Guest Pass with.

When you are logged in to MagCloud, your sales statistics for the past 30 days will appear at the top of your home page. You can see a more complete view of your sales statistics by clicking the "All Your Stats" link on the home page, or visiting the Stats tab on your My Projects page.

If you have not yet had any sales, no sales statistics will appear. Please note that a sale is credited (and appears in the sales statistics) only after it has shipped. Also note that your own orders (which will not include markup) are included in the sales statistics.

On the Stats page under My Projects publishers can see the following web viewer statistics for all their collections or just a single publication:

• Reads: number of times a publication was opened in the web viewer
• Readers: number of unique visitors who have launched a publication in the web viewer
• Pageviews: the total number of times a page in a publication has been shown
• Shares: the total number of times a publication was shared from with in the web viewer
• Clicks: the number of hyperlinks clicked in a publication
• Downloads: the number of PDF downloads from within the web viewer
• Click Through Rate: the number of times hyperlinks in a publication were clicked divided by the total number of times they was viewed.

So for example Dylan's Publication has the following Stats for the Past 7 Days:

• 62 Reads: his publication has been opened in the web viewer a total of 62 times
• 48 Readers: 48 unique visitors have launched Dylan's publication
• 280 Pageviews: 280 pages within Dylan's publication where shown in the web viewer
• 10 Shares: Dylan's publication was shared 10 times via social media channels or email.
• 6 Clicks: 6 hyperlinks were clicked in Dylan's publication
• 2 Downloads: A PDF version of the publication was downloaded twice.
• 1.2 % Clickthrough Rate: Hyperlinks in Dylan's publication were clicked 1.2% of the time they were viewed.

MagCloud pays publishers monthly if they have a balance of $10 or more in profit on the last day of the calendar month. Publishers who meet this minimum profit threshold will have their monthly profit credited to their PayPal account on or before the 10th day of the following calendar month.

MagCloud PDFs must have all fonts embedded to ensure that our digital presses are able to reproduce them correctly in print. For information on how to embed the fonts used in your document from a variety of programs, please see the step-by-step instructions available for download on our PDF Design Resources page.

If you believe you have correctly set your fonts to embed and are still receiving this error, it's possible that the non-embedded font occurs in an empty, hidden, or transparent text frame in your document, or that a single character within a text block uses a different font than the rest of the paragraph. Deleting text frames that are empty or hidden, and correcting those where a single character is a different font should eliminate the embedded font error message you are receiving.

If you have Adobe Acrobat Pro, the preflight function can find these for you. Go to Advanced > Preflight > PDF Analysis, and choose the report called "List text using non-embedded fonts." This will list any instances of text that includes non-embedded fonts.

If you created the file in Adobe InDesign, before exporting the PDF go into Type > Find Font, select the non-embedded font's name, and click Find First and Find Next until one of the above mentioned cases has been found on the page mentioned in the error message. This method takes longer, but should eliminate this upload message if the offending text is found and corrected.

MagCloud only accepts PDF files. Visit our PDF Design Resources page to see our PDF specifications and download step-by-step instructions for creating a MagCloud-ready PDF in a variety of programs.

If you are unable to convert your file to a PDF in the program you created it in, Adobe has a subscription-based PDF converter. The tool supports a number of file types, but is a paid service.

It is possible to lock a PDF during its creation, and MagCloud cannot accept locked PDFs. If you get either of the above messages after uploading your file, check the security tab when exporting your publication as a PDF to ensure no boxes are checked requiring a password to open or edit the file. Disabling this option should allow you to upload your PDF to MagCloud without seeing either of the above messages. For more information, please see the downloadable instructions on our PDF Design Resources page for the software you are using to create your PDF.

The multi-page PDF you upload to MagCloud should not include spreads. One page in the PDF should be equivalent to one page in your publication.

For more information about creating your PDF, please see our PDF Design Resources page.