Will Wallace

Well ... this thread started in September of 2018, so we have been asking --no, PLEADING -- for Epub export for six YEARS. And now they've finally come out and said, "Okay, we're working on it -- stay tuned." Meanwhile, life goes on and God only knows how many potential customers they've missed (and how many customers they've lost) because their flagship page layout program can't do what it's predecessor already did!

That's all well and good, but my chapters were already set up that way in the Word file. When it was imported into Affinity Publisher, Publisher didn't even recognize the chapter breaks at all -- I had chapter heads occurring in the middle of pages with the end of the preceding chapter on the same page. That's not helpful. Why should I have to go back and re-do in Publisher what was already set up properly in Word?

No, it doesn't. My chapter breaks are formatted in Word using section break > odd page. Publisher completely ignored them.

Using that method to import a manuscript from Word, I have found that Affinity Publisher ignores my carefully placed SECTION (not page) breaks at new chapters. Shouldn't it recognize chapter breaks? I suppose there's a work-around to create chapter breaks, such as discussed in another recent discussion thread here, but why should we have to apply time-consuming, manual work-arounds for something that should be automatic?

That sounds like a lot of work to accomplish what Affinity Publisher should be able to do natively.

There are two types of e-books (in both the EPUB and Kindle universes): "reflowable," and fixed layout. For most books that are primarily text and intended more for reading than for viewing, the first choice is reflowable. A reflowable e-book allows the reader to change the type size to suit his/her reading device, eyesight, and personal preferences -- and the text automatically adjusts line length and line breaks to fit the available screen width. Since most e-books are arguably novels, the default is for EPUBs to be reflowable. The other choice, to use your words, "respects" the book designer's fixed layout. Fixed layout is generally chosen for cookbooks, childrens' books (which usually have illustrations occupying the majority of each page), and photo essay type books. When creating an e-book from a word processing file, you need to specify whether you want it to be rerflowable or fixed layout.

Exactly. Ten days for a trial period is nothing. I don't consider a 30-day trial period to be long enough. I have a number of life activities and commitments competing for my time. Ten days isn't enough time to thoroughly wring out a new program even if you can devote all your waking hours in those ten days to testing the program. Most people can't do anything close to that.

The video tells us exactly NOTHING. Judging by the video, I expect the new version to be "all hat and no cattle" (as they say in Texas).

That right there is an extremely cringe-worthy video. "Nonsense" doesn't even begin to describe just how painfully idiotic it is.

Swift Publisher, however, is only available for Mac -- not available for Windows.

Serif PagePlus could export to EPUB -- and it wasn't through an extension. Of course formatting a file for EPUB is different than formatting for print. Nobody said otherwise. But the program Affinity Publisher replaced could export to EPUB, yet after years of requests, Affinity still hasn't added that capability to Publisher. There's an old saying: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." As far as I'm concerned, Affinity isn't interested in repeat customers, or in recommendations. I can't in good conscience recommend that anyone waste their time and money on Affinity Publisher. YMMV.

Publisher is a dead end for me, too -- not only because of the lack of footnote support, but also because of the lack of EPUB export/conversion. Quite honestly, it's like the developers are working overtime to ensure that people WON'T buy their program.

I can't think of a single style guide that supports this concept. A large footnote that's too big to fit on the bottom of page 16 may be continued onto page 17 (and possibly even onto page 18), but never started on page 15, a page before the location of the footnote reference.

Brochures is what Microsoft Publisher does. I bought Affinity to do books. I bought it as a user of the previous Serif desktop publishing program. They approached me with Affinity, and their marketing claim was that the new product was better in every way than the old product. Nowhere did they mention that the new product didn't include what I consider to be a core function of the old product: EPUB export. As a self-published author, I issue my books as printed books, Kindle e-books, and EPUB e-books. I think most self-published authors do the same. Affinity needs to get with the program. Without EPUB export, I certainly can't and won't recommend Affinity Publisher to anyone. Bluntly, it's useless to me.

I'm sure that's correct. What some "experts" churn out as e-books are so bad that a kid in grammar school could probably do better.