Commercial printers who use the trade supplier can now get free electronic versions of any offset-printed book with a run length of at least 500 that has been perfect bound or saddlestitched, said manager Alex Coulson.

The e-book starts with a print-ready PDF; resellers can then provide URLs or videos they want embedded in the electronic text. The e-book includes a search function and is compatible with iPads, iPhones and Android devices, said Coulson.

[Related: Adobe wants mags to go digital]

"We're saying to our clients that they can sell it and put a price on it. They can sell it as an added extra and hopefully it gets our clients over the line when they're quoting," he told ProPrint.

"It's a good sticky product. If a client gets it done one time, they'll ask for it again when they come back.

"It's really good for real estate magazines because it links to the property and has all the extra photos they couldn't get in the printed magazine."

Coulson said Hero Print wouldn't offer the e-book as a standalone product, despite requests from some resellers.

"We're printers at the end of the day. We don't want to give up printing and become a software developer," he said.

Hero Print is a trade-only division of Printforce. It is based in Sydney and Perth and has about 35 staff, said Coulson.

[LinkedIn: Do you sell 'print' or 'communications'?]

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