Will Wallace

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.

When the company that sold you software contacts you and tells you that they have retired the product you are using and you should buy their new product in order to get the newest, safest, most up-to-date features, IMHO that's "replacing" the old product. You can try as hard as you like to parse the language -- I certainly don't have the old communications, because that all occurred many years ago -- but any normal person would have to interpret what they sent out as "replace."

That's what we who had the Serif products were told when they orphaned the Serif line and replaced it with the Affinity programs.

Not exactly. Amazon is dropping the .MOBI format, but the format for Kindle e-readers will remain .AZW3. What they have done is add .EPUB to the types of files that can be uploaded to a Kindle using their "Send to Kindle" app or dedicated e-mail function. The file is converted to .AZW3 during the upload. The Kindle devices still do not directly support .EPUB files.

I grew weary of waiting for Affinity to comment in this thread, so I contacted support directly. Here's the reply I received this morning: To me, this translates as, "We hear you, and we don't care. Don't hold your breath."

I realize that this post is now more than a year old, but the predecessor to Affinity Publisher, Serif PagePlus, has an Epub export function. It's incomprehensible that the replacement for PagePlus omits a function that has become exponentially MORE important since the switch from PagePlus to Affinity Publisher.

PDF2ID is not an answer. It doesn't generate EPUB files from anything. It converts PDFs to InDesign .indd files. If you have InDesign, you don't need to be concerned that Affinity Publisher doesn't allow exporting to EPUB.

I had PagePlus X9, but it stopped working after a recent Windows 10 update. I finally uninstalled it, then reinstalled it. Last night I brought part of a current book project into PagePlus just to test the EPUB export. Yes, it is there, and it works better than Microsoft's stand-alone converter, better than LibreOffice's export to EPUB, and better than SoftMaker Office's export to EPUB. Affinity Publisher is being marketed as an alternate to Adobe InDesign. InDesign has long included support for EPUB export, both reflowable and fixed layout. It is unconscionable and incomprehensible that we've been asking for this in Affinity Publisher for literally YEARS, and the company hasn't implemented it. It's like they want to send customers to Adobe.

One more vote for the absolute NECESSITY of having the capability of exporting to EPUB. Get with the program, Affinity. EPUB is not a "nice to have" feature, it's an essential function. E-books are exploding, and authors need a way to reliably generate quality EPUB files. The free and affordable converters do NOT do the job -- I know, I've tested so many of them my head spins. They all generate EPUB files that are riddled with formatting errors. One can't recognize center justification. Another doesn't recognize italic type. Most of them can't recognize a section break and start the next chapter on a fresh page/screen. It's a jungle out there. I bought Affinity specifically for self publishing books. Without the ability to generate EPUBs, I've got less than half a loaf, because e-books are outselling paper books by a huge margin. When I see that this has been on the waiting list for more than three YEARS I'm just amazed that any company can be so tone deaf. It reminds me of many years ago when users of a certain desktop publishing program requested a much-needed feature. The company said it couldn't be done. Well, it wasn't more than a couple of months before a start-up competitor came out with a program that did what "couldn't be done," and the company that couldn't do it went out of business. Just saying ...