Hey, I found a fix that worked for me (1.10.0, Win 10). I had gotten the same internal error about saving while working on an afpub for a book cover. The best it was letting me do was export to pdf.
Here's what didn't seem to help:
I tried rasterizing some linked svgs, but publisher still would not let me save. (Same internal error as OP)
I created a new file to see if I could just drag the one page I was working on into a new document (not possible)
Then I noticed a problem with scrolling through pages on the original document, I couldn't roll my mouse to scroll the main window, but I could scroll on the layers list.
Finally I decided to close some other documents I had open, one of which was a 120 page lined notebook with lots of repeated elements. (I had this file open for a while with no problems)
After I closed that 120 page afpub, I went back to my book cover afpub. Suddenly I'm allowed to save it!