jmwellborn

Very elegant, @GarryP.  Your method creates all sorts of possibilities.

Five hundred cookies and 128 rum buns out of the oven (not all at once) and here is my feeble attempt at a Christmas card.  Since I couldn't draw my way out of a paper bag, I decided to use the Paper Cut Woodlands Assets with Designer 2 and the wonderful Warp Group, for this year's magnum opus.  Hooray for the eye dropper!
Thank you to all of the wonderful people at Serif who have worked so hard to give us all the new things in the three V2's.  And best wishes to everyone for a very Merry Christmas and a peaceful New Year.

 

@firstdefence it would be very nice if you could add your very sensible Books category addition to the Feedback and Suggestions section!  Old (users, not persons) and wise hands are far more likely to achieve results than those very few who occasionally enter the forums to howl and threaten.  A Books category would be much appreciated here, as I work on my books.  In Publisher.

Definitely don't do that. Make or modify a template to suit your particular book size. From my experience, you will get yourself into too many problems if you attempt to resize a template after you have placed your content into it. Your mileage may vary, of course.
You may or may not find this video helpful. It's time stamped so you can FF to what you want to learn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr5je_swyJU
Once you become proficient at master pages, you'll be able to whip up a template in a matter of minutes that will suit the needs of any size you need. I now have 4.25x7 (up to 250 pp or so) for the old pocket book racks of the 50s and 60s (pocket books are coming back). I use a 5.25x8 template for my longer works. I write fiction, of course. I have no idea about books with photos, technical manuals, &c.
I forgot to mention that Publisher does not do epub.

There you go: 
 

Requesting a Books category with Common book sizes within the File > New... Presets Window, see this post...
 

You can also create your own Category and add common book sizes but unfortunately export of these presets is not an option so I cannot share them, nor is there a book icon available. 

Considering this is a publishing app, likely focused on book publishing, so, I would ask Affinity to add a Books category with common book sizes.
To me, it's an odd omission!

Alright, after reading it aloud about five times, I think I understand now what you're talking about.
So, you mean like, for example, my aforementioned Les Paul which – although a 1993 model – has again this thin neck/headstock joint, even though it's been known since the late 1950s that they are prone to break easily, and even though there have been decades of Les Paul models that have in fact corrected that flaw?
Those "decades of builds, testing and successful performances on live gigs"?

The price of the book has nothing to do with the potential of losing credibility. 
There are two aspects of your warning that might cause people to doubt your credibility. The first is that you decided to write a book using software that had (what you believe to be) an insufficient tool set. Someone might think, "Why should I trust the judgement of someone who would start writing a huge book without even researching or testing the software to make sure it had the features he needed [those "old DTP MS-DOS" features]?" 
The second is that you extrapolated your particular problems with Affinity Publisher into advice to avoid all Affinity products used for any purposes. This is a big leap. Speaking for myself, yes, sometimes a company does something that bothers me so much that I refuse to use them ever again, and I advise other people to avoid them as well. But I only do this when I feel that the company has made grave mistakes, such as intentionally cheating me, failing to provide promised support, or donating money to unseemly political causes. Only in those cases do I want to punish the company.
But in your case, you are clearly seeking to punish Serif because of lack of features (that you could have known about before getting far into writing your book) and because of bugginess. So it comes across as petty, lacking in judgement, and suggests a spiteful temperament.

I don't think anyone is implying the software is perfect, nor that you're totally at fault. It's the type of reaction and how it will be received / perceived. I can understand the frustration -- I've been there many times (in this case not with Affinity but certainly with others), but to complain in this manner will just look like whining. At best your readers will wonder why you continue to use such "bad" tools. Or even worse they may wonder whether they can trust your expertise when you're "obviously" having issues using the same tools others apparently use without problem. I'm not saying that's literally true, but it's the perception.
Part of being professional is dealing with problems and moving on. The problems are real, but they're not your customers' fault so there's no reason to complain to them. 

Although I can partially understand the frustrations with Affinity Publisher, aka when individuals have a number of issues with APub and then say "Avoid Affinity Publisher". That's one thing (app), but then making it the blanket statement "never buy Affinity products" is a pretty bad generalization here.

Yes, you are wrong; on two counts.
Firstly you are wrong because this is just your experience/opinion, it is certainly not the experience, nor opinion, of many other users.
Secondly you are wrong because many readers will wonder why an author who dislikes the software they use continues to use it, and willingly (in the author's opinion) inflicts problems on their readers! (If, indeed there are problems!) It's on a par with saying to readers, "I'm sorry this book is inaccurate, but I couldn't be bothered to get it right."

Gianno Becatinni should think twice before putting such crap in the front section if his book. When I read such things at the beginning of a book, that book and the author will immediatelly loose my interest... forever! The only conclusion coming from that paragraph is the frustration with the software and temperament of the author.
Many other authors successfully, create and publish books made in Affinity Publisher. They struggle from time to time, have to find workaround but in the end they deliver their masterpiece to their audience.
Like Loukash already perfectly said, if you are not happy but the Affinity Suite, then use something else. There are other alternatives which will let you do the same thing, even for free. But Gianno Becatinni, don't put that kind of message in your book, it only shows you are a very short tempered person. Instead, just use another application which gives you better results. Maybe Affinity is not a good tool for you and another will deliver perfect results for you. Such things happen.
I hope you learned a wise lesson  today.
Chris
 

I shouldn't have sold my Paul Reed Smith 20 years ago. Recently I bought a used Les Paul and I actually hate it. Or rather, my back hates it. But hey, I also play a fretless Fender Jazz Bass and I love it!  
Anyway…
Honestly: I do.
If you were an architect, would you also tell your client: "Sorry that your house doesn't have a proper bathroom but I couldn't figure out how to draw it with the architecture software I was using so it's all their fault!"

Martin D28 all the way, also have a budget DX1 that I got for a steal, all I need now are Eric Claptons fingers and some talent lol!

My view?
That kind of verbiage is unprofessional and immature sounding. If in fact the troubles are real then they're real. If you want to write, for example, a blog entry outlining the issues you've had that's certainly your prerogative. In fact, it might even be useful to other potential users. But do it factually, professionally and without spite. After all, your readers buy your books for their content, not because of the tools you used to create them. I mean, how many music lovers say, "I'm not listening to that guy -- He's playing a Fender!!"  🙂  Besides, saying "after two major versions I am not still able..." just raises the obvious question: "Then why are you still using it?"
As much as we might get invested in the process (been there myself) customers aren't. They just want the product. If you can't create the product you and your customers want with Tool X, then use something else. End of story.
It's tempting to vent (again, been there myself) but it's something you'll immediately regret.

Yeah, I'd even say this post makes you seem very inexperienced with any type of design or publishing software. I use all 3 Affinity programs for a wide variety of things and I have some issues here and there, but no more than other companies, video software, music software, the internet, Windows, Mac, etc.
Publishing software doesn't really like more than 400 pages in a single document in my experience, and I have some of the most powerful computers I could ever need to run way more than a simple publishing doc. In InDesign, I used to use the books compiling feature to keep files under 30 or so pages (based on chapter lengths), and so Affinity was a shock at first when I had V1 and docs over 350 pages. Massive slow down and scrolling loss.
V2 now has the chapters feature, and it seems a little buggy/crashy since it is brand new. Hoping it gets fixed as quickly as issues arise, but today is my first time trying to get it set up. I've already learned that how you save the main book file vs the chapters is very important, or yes, you will lose some things. It hasn't been difficult to get back though.
As far as the hyperlinks part goes...what do you need them for in a massive print file? (Side note, if you plan on publishing yourself or on behalf of a self-published author on Amazon, hard cover copies have a limit of 500 pages). If you are publishing a digital copy to Amazon, they need an ePub anyway, which Affinity doesn't do. Though you could probably get away with exporting a WebP file to Amazon still (how Microsoft Word users used to have to do it). Most authors use Google docs for Kindle copies, set up their basic formatting there, export the ePub, and then let Kindle take care of the rest since it has so many formatting restrictions. Hyperlinks work great. Using Publisher for something like that definitely wouldn't be my recommendation unless they worked together with Amazon to create some sort of awesome, seamless export style.
 

Agreed. That's the kind of thing I'd be inclined to post (or email) and then regret it the next day. Rather than just stating that you experienced these problems creating a very large book using Publisher, you are advising people to stay away from all Affinity products unconditionally. 
If the book relates to desktop publishing or graphics, then it seems fair game to point out the deficiencies you experienced and mention the software by name, assuming your experience and information is accurate (as @walt.farrell questioned). But if the book is about another topic, it seems less appropriate.

I certainly wouldn't buy a book that contained that sort of wording.

I'd say that's pretty spiteful. 

I have not experienced this myself, either with the V1 or V2 apps - this, despite using them regularly.
I have had an occasional Affinity app crash. But I have not lost weeks or even days. I have lost a few hours in total over several years with two things: 1. Inexplicable TOC weirdness. 2. Problems exporting to PDF where EPS/SVG images are resized to 0 by 0 due to some bug (suitable workaround found).
There is no general problem with Affinity apps in my experience. 

I am going to add a warning like this to my books (they are very large and don't allow to change manually the page references).
Never buy Affinity products
I used Affinity Publisher to create this book. Besides weeks lost for continuous crashes, after two major versions I am not still able to add page references or hyperlinks as any desktop publishing software allows.
I apologize for the trouble it will bring you, it was my fault having not checked when I started using.
Do you think that I am wrong? It is not ironic, it's a real question, I don't want to write it if I am wrong.

@jmwellborn Wish you too a contemplative and peaceful Christmas!

Welcome to the forums!  The new location is WINDOW>PAGES.  All of the panels have been moved there from VIEW>STUDIO.  You will find some panels as extensions, such as TEXT>