Constructing your own version of the page-turning demo book

This book seems more complicated to make than it actually is; there are only a couple of basic concepts that you need to learn here. Follow these instructions to duplicate the version that can be downloaded, but feel free to play with them and change them as you like.

1. Start up Sophie Author.
2. Create a new Sophie book. Make it 640 x 400; give it whatever title you like. (You might want the height to be a little bit smaller than usual because it's useful to keep the timeline interface open while making this book.
3. Using the page border and fill HUD, set the color of the page background: make it green if you'd like, or whatever color you'd like. If you wanted, you could give the page a border.
4. Save the page as a page template.
5. Add two more pages to your book.
6. Apply the page template that you just made to both of those pages. You now have a three-page book with no content.
7. Now let's add a title. Select Insert > Text to insert a text frame; drag the edges to make it go along the top of the book, where the title is. (The width and height could be 600 x 75.)
8. Insert your cursor in that frame and type a title.
9. Using the character and paragraph halos, style the text of the title so that it looks nice.
10. Select the title frame and select Edit > Copy from the menu (or press command/control-c). We're going to copy this frame.
11. Go to the other two pages of the book and paste the frame using Edit > Paste or pressing command/control-v. The title should appear in exactly the same location.
12. On each page, add a frame saying the page number so you know which page you're on. In the demo book, this is the frame in the lower left; you can make it appear however you like. If you want to add text or images to each page to make it look different, go ahead.
13. Now let's add audio. Select Insert > Audio Record to record audio. The audio recording interface will appear.
14. Press the red record button and start saying something about which page you're on: "This is page 1. This is page 2. This is page 3.". It's best if you talk for five to ten seconds for each page: if you don't say very much, it will be hard to line up the times precisely, and if you go on for too long, the book might be boring.
15. When you're done, press the red stop button. The new audio you've recorded will be inserted on the page you're on.
16. Select the audio on the page and click the red X in the upper right corner of the halos to delete the frame from the page. This doesn't delete the audio from the resources; it just takes it off the page.
17. Now select File > Book Properties. You'll see the title, height, and width of your book. Pull down the Background audio drop-down menu. Select New audio recording, which is the audio you just recorded. Check the box that says Sync audio to pages. Click OK to close this window. Now you've set the background audio for your book.
18. You might try previewing your book now. What will happen is that on page 1 the audio will start playing. However, the page won't turn for a long time: that's because the default length of a page is 10 minutes, which is probably longer than the audio you recorded. Close the preview.
19. Now let's try setting the page lengths for each page. Go to page 1 and click it's timeline halo. The timeline HUD will open. You'll see that there's a value in MAIN that's set to 600,000. That means that the page shows for 600,000 milliseconds - or 600 seconds, which is 10 minutes. We don't want the page to stay open that long. Try setting it to 10,000 milliseconds, which means 10 seconds - make it a little longer than you want the page to stay open for. Close the timeline HUD.
20. Now open the timeline interface, by clicking where it says Timeline at the bottom of the Sophie window. Now you're seeing the page's timeline. The page timeline probably doesn't appear very long, because the page only lasts for 10 seconds. Let's zoom in the timeline: click on the drop-down menu that says 500ms and change it to 10ms. The timeline should get longer.
21. Now preview your book. What you'll see now is that the slider of the timeline will move along with the audio being played back. Pay attention: when it gets to 10 seconds, the page will turn. But that's probably longer than you want. Watch where the slider is when it should turn and remember what time that is. Close the preview after it gets to page 2.
22. Go back to page 1's timeline HUD. Change the length of the page to what it should be. Then try previewing the book again. If it's right, great; if not, try another time.
23. Do the same thing for page 2 and page 3. Note that if you have the book on page 2 and open a preview, the book will start playing on page 2, which should speed things up.
24. When you're finished, save your book and open it in Sophie Reader. The pages should turn; at the end of page 3, it should go back to page 1.

That's everything. A slightly more complicated version of this book might include links: if you include a link on page 1 that goes to page 3, when the user clicks that link, the book will turn to page 3 and the timeline will start playing at page 3. You can also include links that pause and play the timeline.

A book very similar to this one - but with real content - could be used to create a slideshow with narration.