How Masterfile digital editions work

Digital Editions is the Masterfile module for selling digital, in-browser reading experiences alongside your print catalog. It's included with the Retailer Ops plan. Customers buy them through Shopify like any other product, and read them in a Masterfile-hosted viewer that opens from their Shopify customer account.

This page is the map: how the pieces fit together, and what's automatic versus what you do.

The pipeline

Data flows in one direction:

Project → Editions → Shopify product → Customer entitlement → Viewer

1. You build a project in Masterfile. The container for one title's content and metadata.
2. You add capsules to the project: one self-contained reading experience each (a scroll, a layered-art stack, an album, a grid of attachments).
3. You bundle capsules into editions. The customer-facing units (a standard release, a deluxe variant, an exclusive).
4. When you publish the project, Masterfile creates one Shopify product with one variant per edition.
5. When a customer's order is paid, Masterfile grants them an entitlement for the edition they bought, and auto-fulfills the line item on the order.
6. The customer opens the edition from their Shopify account, and the viewer renders the capsules in the order the edition specifies.

Once a project is published, edits land in a draft layer. Customers keep seeing the last published version until you republish.

How Masterfile maps to Shopify

The mapping is one-to-one and predictable.

So a project with three editions becomes one Shopify product with three variants. The customer's relationship is to the variant; Masterfile's is to the edition. They're tied together by an editionId metafield Masterfile stamps on each variant at publish time. Once an order is paid, each line item on a digital editions variant becomes one Masterfile entitlement for the order's customer.

Capsules don't appear in the table because they don't cross over to Shopify. They live inside the viewer, bundled into editions.

The three workflows

Everything Masterfile does on the digital-editions side is one of these three flows.

1. Build

Create a project, fill it with capsules, and compose those capsules into one or more editions.

• Create a digital editions project.
• Capsule how-tos, one per type: scroll, layered art, music, attachment.
• Compose and preview an edition.

The capsule library is project-scoped. Capsules are reusable across the editions in their project but don't cross projects.

2. Publish

Pushing a project makes its editions buyable.

• Publish a digital editions project creates the Shopify product on first publish, updates it on every republish, and stamps each variant with the metafield that links it back to a Masterfile edition.
• Resync an edition to Shopify re-pushes the published snapshot when the storefront has drifted out of date or the previous sync failed.

Pricing, inventory, and sales-channel settings on the resulting Shopify product are yours to set. Masterfile doesn't manage them.

3. Deliver

After publish, the delivery half is fully automatic.

• Order payment grants the buyer an entitlement for the edition, and Masterfile auto-fulfills the line item on the order. One entitlement per customer per edition, regardless of how many copies they bought.
• The customer's Shopify account's Digital Editions page lists every edition they're entitled to.
• Clicking an edition mints a short-lived viewer session and opens the viewer, which renders the edition's capsules in order.

See About digital edition access for the full chain from variant → entitlement → viewer session.

Where Masterfile shows up in Shopify

Digital Editions adds two surfaces to the existing Masterfile footprint:

• Digital Editions in the Masterfile admin sidebar (Shopify admin → Apps → Masterfile → Digital Collectibles → Digital Editions). Where you manage projects, capsules, and editions.
• A Digital Editions block in the customer-account theme. Where customers see their library and open editions. Set up via Enable Shopify customer account pages.

The viewer itself is served from a Masterfile-hosted URL. Customers reach it only through the customer-account block. There's no public link to share.

What's automatic vs. what you do

Automatic:

• Creating the Shopify product and variants on first publish, and keeping them in sync with the project on every republish.
• Stamping each variant with the editionId metafield that links it back to its Masterfile edition.
• Granting customer entitlements when orders are paid, and auto-fulfilling the digital edition line item on the resulting order.
• Listing entitlements in the customer's Shopify account.
• Minting short-lived viewer sessions when a customer opens an edition.
• Hiding entitlements when the project is unpublished and restoring them on republish.

You:

• Build the project's capsules and editions.
• Publish when each project is ready, and republish to ship updates.
• Add the Digital Editions block to the customer-account theme once during setup.
• Set Shopify-side pricing, inventory, and sales-channel settings on the resulting product.

For the conceptual model, see About digital editions.