Note: I worked around this by placing a text file of my document directly int publisher.
Pasting more than a page worth of text (plain text, copied from a text editor) into a text box crashes Publisher. Pasting a file directly into a textbox has the same result.
I pasted around 4000 words into an a4 sized textbox. Crash. 2000 words. Crash. 1000 words. Crash. Slightly more than the size of the textbox. Crash. Just less than the text box size. Okay.
Repeated with different text and files around ten times.