AP - One-Page templates that adjust to facing-page gutters

[veggiespam]

My wife & I purchased the entire Affinity Suite to save us the headaches we encountered from Word+PDF on KDP/CreateSpace when creating her full-color art tutorial books (sample book here:  https://oksanaball.com/books/ or https://amzn.to/2T0Y1Nh ).  We liked Affinity Publisher's templates for image layout and placement along with the ability to easily insert automatic fancily formatted image numbers (Word's formatting is impossible for this).  These art books are generally laid out as facing pages with text on one side and a bunch various placements of images on the other.

We are currently trying to write her next book in AP and are having issue with margins, gutters, and templates.  I have configured a facing-page master layout using a large background image across the facing pages and the headers for left and right side pages being different.  Then, we apply a single page template to the left or right side depending on if we need a page with text-only, multiple images, "zoomed" images, staggered step images, "tips", etc.  Sometimes, the images appear on left, sometimes on right, sometimes on both - thus single page templates are nicer to work with.

Where I am running into issues is with the gutters - I need different margins depending on left or right side.  I could create two sets of image page templates, but there has to be an easier way that having both "four images, left side" and "four images, right side". 

I have attached a screen shot from KDP's preview that shows how our one-page template containing four images violates the gutter.

Is there a way to create a single-page template which "anchors" itself to the outer margin?  I tried creating a slightly narrower "spread" which I hoped I could shift left or right, but that doesn't work for me. I could not seem to find this type of solution in the forums or tutorials and I would love for someone to point me in the right direction. I'm willing to share apub template file example if that helps.

Thanks.

-j

Edited June 26, 2020 by veggiespam

[Old Bruce]

Do you mean a single page Master Page instead of a template? Using single page masters on a double page spread is a hassle as it (the single page master) has no sense of inner or outer edges and thus doesn't differentiate between left or right.

16 hours ago, veggiespam said:

Is there a way to create a single-page template which "anchors" itself to the outer margin?  I tried creating a slightly narrower "spread" which I hoped I could shift left or right, but that doesn't work for me. I could not seem to find this type of solution in the forums or tutorials and I would love for someone to point me in the right direction. I'm willing to share apub template file example if that helps.

I am puzzled by why the gutter would be a problem, is this set for printing a bleed or no bleed book. The little bit of information from "KDP/CreateSpace" doesn't explicitly state that there is a minimum gutter size for a no bleed book but there may well be. If that is the case then you would need an inner margin equal to or greater than that distance. I ask because there is no red warning on the orange "tip" which is outside the dashed line.

An apub template file would help.