I built this product back in 2018 as a small side project: a tool that turns short videos into physical flipbooks. After launching it, I didn't touch it for years. Life and work took over, and it sat idle. But it kept getting a few orders every month, which made it impossible to forget. So in December 2024, I decided to rebrand and revive it.
The initial version relied on various local printing offices. I kept switching from one to another, but the results were never quite right. Either the quality wasn't good enough, or the turnaround times were too long. Eventually, me and my wife bought all the necessary machines and moved production in-house.
Now, it's a family business. My wife and I handle everything: printing, binding, cutting, addressing, and shipping each flipbook. On the technical side, it’s powered by Next.js, with FFmpeg extracting frames and handling overlays, and ImageMagick used for adding trim marks and creating the final PDFs.
After many years of working in IT, working on something tangible feels refreshing. It's satisfying to create something that brings people joy. And that is not hard to sell (like dev tools, for example haha). There are still challenges: we're experimenting with different cover papers, improving production, and testing new ideas without making things confusing. But that’s part of what keeps us moving forward.
by karaterobot on 2/3/25, 8:48 PM
This is weird, but I make my living by digitizing old flipbooks into MP4 files!
by rectalogic on 2/3/25, 4:41 PM
by benuuu on 2/3/25, 6:59 PM
I uploaded a vertical video and it was a little unclear to me where the binding would be. I'm assuming it's on the left. It might be helpful to have a ui element to the side of the video container that looked like the binding so it was clear that would be the end product.
by HarHarVeryFunny on 2/3/25, 6:04 PM
Is this just supplemental income, or are you actually making a living from it?
Isn't it a bit of a risk to tout the success of this idea among a tech crowd capable of going off and creating competitors?
by andresgottlieb on 2/3/25, 10:03 PM
If you're into flipbooks, check-out these 6-in-one marvels. I got the Apollo 11 collection and love it:
https://flipboku.com/by apparent on 2/3/25, 7:59 PM
How long of videos do you recommend this for? How many flips are the books good for? Any tips on keeping them in good flipping condition, in your experience?
Also, your title is missing an "a" before "living". Love the idea and execution!
by kristopolous on 2/3/25, 4:25 PM
probably not worth the manufacturing effort, but if you could make a book that flips on both sides, with different clips, that would potentially be novel enough to pass virality coefficients.
You'd need some radically different zig-zag binding process ... sounds like a lot of effort but might pay off.
Just to be clear I'm not saying duplex print, I'm saying flip right and flip left, same side up
by subpixel on 2/3/25, 4:28 PM
Really cool, I'd expect to see how much I would save when ordering 5, 10 etc (of the same video).
I think it's clear that groups are the winning use case, but if I want all parties from a vacation (picking one example of many) to get a flipbook, I need to pay less than $25 per.
by bityard on 2/4/25, 1:48 AM
I love this. Hoping to retire early from my tech career someday and I have dreams of finding my own weird semi-profitable niche that I can run by just myself and my family for a few hours a day.
I currently have an incredibly small ebay business doing fairly specific motorsports vinyl emblems. The profit margin per order is great but I'm lucky to get a handful of orders a month and have no idea how to scale it. There are thousands of other people doing vinyl stuff on ebay for absolutely peanuts and I don't know how to compete with that.
Are you selling only online or are you setting up vendor booths at events?
by andrewchilds on 2/3/25, 11:21 PM
This is great! Congrats on the relaunch and finding something tangible that can both pay the bills and work as a family business. Very cool that you were able to bring production in-house.
The Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, NY has, among many cool interactive exhibits about animation, a little stage and camera where you can record a short video and then go buy a flipboard version from the gift shop. They print it out and construct it right there for you (and it really does look like a pain). We’ve bought a couple and they’re really fun.
by ggambetta on 2/3/25, 5:30 PM
This looks pretty great, seriously considering ordering one!
The length is fixed at 72 pages/frames, but you support uploading up to 30s of video. How does this work? You sample 72 frames from a video of any length? Is there a recommended frame rate (and therefore duration) that is somehow optimal? What's the natural frame rate range of humans flipping flipbooks? So many questions!
by AntiEgo on 2/3/25, 4:21 PM
It
almost looks like something I could make myself, but cutting those tiny pages while keeping them perfectly indexed would surely be where my diy would go wrong. Good work OP for working out that special sauce!
It's a clever idea, and it's encouraging to see that there are still clever ideas at the small-business scale still waiting to be invented.
by ChrisArchitect on 2/3/25, 3:38 PM
Love it. There was a service a long time ago that used to make fun little greeting card type flipbooks (from their own content). They made great gifts, something different that were well-received by those I gifted them to. Neat behind-the-scenes details. The challenge of production with papers/printing and the whole process is real!
by endofreach on 2/4/25, 8:32 PM
Sweet. The night before last christmas eve, i needed to come up with a gift quickly– and i started to write a script for this. I went down the rabbit hole of perfecting different formats, length variations etc & generate the PDFs.
Unfortunately, i failed at the physical part of this. I couldn't figure out that quickly how to print it nicely & make a usable flipbook.
So my gift ended up being a crappy mvp of a flipbook. It was appreciated, but it's embarrassing considering how many hours i've put into it, for a shitty result.
I would order, but i know, the minute i pay, i will fall down the rabbit hole again and get obsessed trying to create the physical flipbook myself. But i really don't have the time for that at the moment.
When i do, i will place an order!
All the best to you!
by escapecharacter on 2/3/25, 5:54 PM
What if you converted video essays to flipbooks, by only taking the frames that a new subtitle appeared on?
by wanderingstan on 2/4/25, 2:47 AM
Years ago I built a service that would print family & friend Instagram and Facebook posts and automatically mail them to an incarcerated loved one. I joked that it will be technically possible to convert the videos to flip books, and here you have gone and done it!
by crtez on 2/3/25, 4:15 PM
Quick heads up, there’s a typo at “Create a uniqu flipbooke gift”.
by seanconaty on 2/4/25, 12:43 AM
This is awesome. I did this one time (not automated). I wanted to have an analog version of a video. It was a video of my baby daughter laughing. That was almost 10 years ago.
I used ImageMagik to make some stills. I bulk uploaded them to Walgreens photos. Thankfully they were all printed in order! I jankily bound them together somehow and it worked!
I always thought it would be neat to have this as a service. I will be ordering some of these for sure!
by illwrks on 2/3/25, 8:29 PM
I studied design and visual communication. Around 2005/2006 I was doing a short animation but didn’t have a suitable way to show it when my project was being assessed. I did the same, I manually printed and trimmed each frame of animation and then blind them into a little flip book. It was such a pain to do but the lectures loved it! I can’t imagine how cumbersome it must be if you’re doing it for hundreds of orders!
by sgallant on 2/4/25, 3:11 PM
I saw this on X yesterday and LOVE the idea. I'll be ordering a flip book for sure. The perfect gift for my wife!
by tmshapland on 2/4/25, 1:02 AM
This type of project is the best of the Hacker News community. It makes reading and dealing with all the snark worth it.
by mynjin on 2/3/25, 6:23 PM
It would be nifty if, when you squeeze the spine to flip it, that it played audio from the clip and maybe an audio message.
by nonick on 2/4/25, 12:40 PM
I have used flipstory.com (no longer in business) in 2011 cu create 2 very nice flipbooks. It was 7,99 Euros, transport included from France to Romania. I still enjoy it, I keep it beside other family photos, as it's my months old son crawling on the floor towards the camera.
Good luck!
by mosselman on 2/3/25, 8:50 PM
I love the website design, it looks great!
by jsat on 2/3/25, 4:49 PM
The flip demonstration video needs to be redone. Very poor execution by the person flipping.
by elevatedastalt on 2/3/25, 9:47 PM
How do you bring users to your site? Is it through organic search, ads, or is it entirely word of mouth?
by jkkramer on 2/3/25, 4:50 PM
Great little product! Seems like this could actually make good money with the right marketing.
Are you doing anything special to leverage TikTok or Instagram Reels? I notice you had a few sample posts. I'd go hard on that if you're not already: post yourself, hire micro influencers, etc.
by talkingtab on 2/3/25, 7:10 PM
A very long time ago there was a program on the Mac. You drew one picture (macdraw maybe), just lines, then a second picture. You could then watch as pix 1 morphed into pix 2. Anyone know where something like that is. A flip book for that would be great.
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by suyash on 2/3/25, 5:27 PM
Nicely done, what are the most popular use cases for this service? I guess weddings?
by PyWoody on 2/4/25, 1:40 PM
The flip videos on the landing page don't play on my Android 15 phone using Brave 1.74.51 on Chromium 132.0.6834.160. I can confirm they do play on my Mac while using the Brave browser, though.
by jacksonrgwalker on 2/3/25, 10:19 PM
Love the idea, sounds like a very fun and rewarding project. I just purchased one- I used a vertical video so I am hoping the binding is on the proper side (didn't see anything about that on the site).
by fitsumbelay on 2/4/25, 12:56 AM
It's really satisfying and inspirational to read about small businesses winning like this. Would love a blog about the daily journey in biz and tech for more of that inspo. Really awesome story.
by tombot on 2/3/25, 4:41 PM
Neat, how did you build the live preview? Green screen with numbered pages?
by jackcarter on 2/4/25, 3:32 PM
This is very cool, congrats on the execution!
Seems great for grandparents. Have you tested with older people with frail or arthritic hands? I'm curious how much dexterity and force is required.
by mcsniff on 2/3/25, 6:23 PM
The site has a weird mixture of case.
Some headings are capitalised while others aren't, doesn't seem to follow any specific reasoning -- might want to take a look at that.
by phmagic on 2/3/25, 6:30 PM
How do your customers find out about your business?
by codespin on 2/3/25, 11:53 PM
Great idea! It is cool seeing how you took this concept and made it real, end to end. I'm also considering getting a flipbook.
by kazinator on 2/4/25, 5:51 AM
At the risk of sounding one of those people posting "I can do that in a weekend" ... I honestly think that not just I but almost literally anyone can cob this conversion together for themselves with Bash, FFmpeg, ImageMagick, a printer, a pair of scissors or paper guillotine, a bit of glue and a sprinkle of AI assistance so as not to have to read a shred of documentation.
by markymarker on 2/4/25, 12:22 AM
This is great! Similar to the makertool at www.fliposcope.com which is a DIY hand-cranked movie machine.
by flog on 2/3/25, 8:24 PM
How do you actually do the manufacturing? What machines does one need to do something like this?
by cwmoore on 2/3/25, 6:13 PM
Print and bind a few copies of YouTube for a serious carbon sequestration opportunity.
by gizajob on 2/3/25, 4:23 PM
Pedantic observation - maybe you could get a woman to do the flip on your splash demo video? It seems like a wedding flip book like that would be better and more aesthetically congruous if demonstrated with female hands.
by tomovo on 2/3/25, 11:37 PM
Nice, can't decide what meme gif to try first.
by worldhistory on 2/3/25, 10:11 PM
Beautiful. I love this. I hope you sell millions.
by throw03172019 on 2/3/25, 8:19 PM
Is our video deleted after the book is created?
by kookamamie on 2/4/25, 7:59 AM
Can you configure the flipbook FPS?
by natas on 2/3/25, 10:32 PM
What is your revenue? and profit?
by joshu on 2/4/25, 2:30 AM
What printers are you using?
by hsuduebc2 on 2/3/25, 4:27 PM
Very clever. Love the idea.
by livando on 2/3/25, 9:49 PM
love this post, congrats.
by napolux on 2/3/25, 4:05 PM
congrats on re-launching!
by G_o_D on 2/4/25, 3:21 AM
Waste of paper and ink and space, for 1 minute clip getting 60 frames and printing 60 cards to flip 60fps