Print book plus playable sample from the same project
You already have the print product — a KDP interior or an Etsy pack, assembled, proofed, ready to list. The second product is a playable board on a site you own. Same generation. Same puzzle. Not a rebuild.
Sell the same puzzles as PDF, images, and PowerPoint owns the format decision: one composition, several static renders. This page owns the pairing that article left out. Print plus play. Which board is the sample. That the two stay the same puzzle. Where the buy-the-book button sits around the embed.
The path is current desktop output. Newest modules with Interactive editions generate playable JSON / HTML. The BookPublisherTools WordPress plugin — or a player you host yourself — puts the sample on your page. Puzzle Book Studio still assembles the print file. Two outputs. One project.
One generation, two products
The print file and the playable catalog are different deliveries of the same boards.
The print side is the product you already know how to compose. A bound book with a trim and a Look Inside, or a short themed ZIP a buyer prints at home. Puzzle Book Studio holds that composition — sections, titles, layout, solutions — and renders the PDF or the page images. Which static format each channel wants is already written.
The playable side is a short catalog from the same run. Interactive is a per-module license. You buy it for the puzzle type you actually want people to play, not for the whole shop. Web play is live on newest modules. Two that already have their own pages: Hexagon Word Search and Ikura. Do not assume every older module exports JSON or HTML. Check the product page.
The visitor never sees the generator. They see a page on your domain with a board they can finish, and a way to buy the book they just sampled.
Which board is the sample
Not the whole book. A published catalog defaults to a menu of its boards. That is the right shape for an archive. It is the wrong shape next to a print listing. Fifty playable boards answer the question the book was supposed to answer.
Pick the board that sells the print product.
On KDP, that is usually a Look Inside page — a real puzzle at true print difficulty, not a leftover easy grid and not the hardest board in the set. The sample has to represent the rest. On Etsy, it is the first page of the pack. The thumbnail promised a theme; the playable board has to be that theme.
One board is enough. Three to five is a teaser, not a dump. Finishable in minutes. Obviously a puzzle in five seconds. If the free board needs a how-to-play lesson, it is the wrong sample.
The lead-magnet article owns how many boards to give away when the page is also capturing email. This page only needs the pairing rule: the sample is a slice of the print product, not a second catalog.
If you later want a fresh board every week on the same URL, that is a different job — puzzle of the week. Retention cadence is not this pairing. A sample next to a print listing can stay put for as long as the listing does.
Print and play stay the same puzzle
Same theme. Same difficulty band. Same word list or number set. The person who finishes the board has to recognize the book.
A honeycomb title with a square sample is a broken pair. A kids’ vocabulary pack with an expert 40×40 teaser is a broken pair. An Ikura book graded on four givens with a zero-given teaser is a broken pair. The Interactive output is not a different puzzle. It is the same board, playable.
That is why the generation has to be one run, not two projects you keep “in sync.” Two projects drift. Titles change. A word gets swapped. The sample stops matching Look Inside. One project, two exports: the print composition and the playable catalog.
Hexagon Word Search is the word-search case. The printed honeycomb and the browser honeycomb are the same three-axis board. How to put that board on WordPress is the word-search embed article. What an embed is, as a category, is already written: Interactive puzzle embed. This page will not rewrite either.
Ikura is the math case. Nine circles, six totals, the same givens band in print and in the player. The playable Ikura page owns that board as a site extra. Here it is only the second confirmed pairing: a short math book or pack, and one of those boards on your site.
Where the buy button sits
The embed is the proof. The sale is page furniture around it.
Three placements that work:
- Under the board. The visitor finishes, scrolls, and hits the offer while the solve is still warm. “The rest is in the book” is the whole caption.
- Beside the board. On a sales page this is the natural layout: play on the left, cover and buy button on the right. People who never play can still buy.
- On the finish screen. A leveled catalog can end on a completion panel — your message, your button, your URL. That URL should be the book, not your homepage. The lead-magnet article owns that panel as a funnel slot. This page only needs the pairing: the button points at the print product you just sampled.
What the player does not do is sell the book for you. There is no marketplace checkout inside the embed. The link, the cover, the price — those stay on your page, on your store, or on the KDP listing you already run.
The four-channel map — interiors, printables, worksheets, embeddable puzzles — is the product-form article. A KDP interior, an Etsy pack, and a playable sample are three products. They can share one generation. They still have to be cut as three products: a book has a page count, a pack is short, a sample is a slice.
What this is not
This is not a second render format. PDF, page images, and PowerPoint are static deliveries of the assembled book. A playable sample is a different lane: JSON / HTML, an Interactive edition on that module, a page you control.
This is not the embed setup. Export, zip, and shortcode live in Publish a Puzzle Catalog. Word-search-on-WordPress and the embed category are linked above.
This is not the capture funnel. If the page should also take an email address, that design is already written.
This is not a weekly corner and not a scheduled feed. You publish a sample. It stays until you replace it.
This is not every module in the shop. Newest modules with Interactive editions generate online play. Hexagon Word Search does. Ikura does. Check the product page before you build a listing around a type that only prints.
When it is worth doing
You have a print title — or you are about to — and you own a site. The puzzle type is one that already plays online. Put a short matching set on a page you control, point the finish at the book, and keep the long file for KDP or Etsy.
Commercial rights for the finished print products and for puzzles on your own site are part of the Puzzle Maker Pro license, as stated on the homepage.
One project. A print product and a playable sample. Same puzzle. That is the pairing.