Problems adding chapters to a book, page numbers end up on wrong side of the page ... ?

[Wessman]

Hello, I could use some advice please. I am trying to add chapters to a book. Some chapters work fine, but other chapters will have their page numbers on the wrong side at the bottom of the page and I haven't been able to work out why. I've fiddled around with the 'Stray Pages' / 'Merge where possible' commands, which seem somewhat relevant, but without luck. Wonder if anyone has any ideas where I'm going wrong? Thanks.

[MikeTO]

Hi Wessman, Stray Pages is intended to add a blank page or remove an unnecessary blank page where needed and is an essential feature but I don't think it has anything to do with your issue. I've done a lot of playing around with the Books feature and I haven't seen the issue you describe with a typical facing pages document that has new chapters always starting on the right side. But if you were hoping to start some chapters on the left side of a page, that's not possible as far as I know and you should aim to start all of your chapters on the right. And to do this, you need to use Stray Pages.

Why can't Publisher start a chapter on the left? Because that would involve flipping every page of that chapter from the left side of a master to the right, or vice versa, and Publisher can't do that. Here are two examples of what happens when you try to create a book with chapters that can start on either side.

Create a facing-pages chapter with 1 page, it will be a right-side page. Add mirrored page numbers or whatever you want to indicate the side. Create another facing-pages document with 3 pages for chapter 2. Add them to a book and export to PDF. This will generate two, 2-page spreads when it should generate a single right page spread for page 1 followed by a 2-page spread for pages 2-3 and a single left page spread for page 4. Something is going wrong but this is okay because nobody writes 1-page chapters.

A second example. Create two 3-page documents and add mirrored page numbers or whatever. Add them both to a book and export to PDF. This will give you a 6-page document, 3 pages for each chapter. Chapter 1 works properly, Publisher didn't force that right page to the left side like it did in the above example but chapter 2 is wrong.

So trying to start chapters on either side won't work. If you instead use chapters that start only on the right side, you'll have better results. I highly recommend choosing both Merge and Pad from Stray Pages. Here's the same two 3-page chapters exported with Merge and Pad - Publisher padded the left side of the 4-5 spread with a blank page. Note that it won't apply a master to the padded page so no page numbers will appear on it.

 

This is the best case outcome. But if chapter 1 had text on page 2 and nothing on page 3 but the empty frame and a page number, Publisher will not Merge (remove) that page automatically and start chapter 2 to the right of page 2. You'll have a blank page 3 with a page number followed by a blank page 4 that Publisher added due to Pad. I wish the feature was a bit more robust and would merge an otherwise blank page. Until that time, the only workaround is to delete the empty right page from chapter 1. Of course doing that is inconvenient because if you add more text you'll have to add it back and you might mess up with the master page when doing so, it's a bit tricky, so save this until the every final step before publication.

Good luck!

stray.pdf

[Wessman]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your reply.

I haven't yet tested it, but I think your reply has given me an insight into my problem. It's the line where you point out that new chapters must be on the right....

I've been trying to add many of my one-page chapters on the left (because it's a poetry book, and many of the poems are one-pagers) but they end up with the page numbers on the right.

Which leads me to rethink how to restructure a poetry collection....

I like the notion of being able to add chapters to a book, even one-page chapters, because it offers flexibility for a situation where - with a poet for instance - the order of the pages changes. This might occur (for example) if a poem is two pages in length, beginning on the right and moving over the page, and the poet decides to begin from the left and end the poem within the line of sight, on the right.

Going from what you've said, my first thought is that a one-page poem on the left hand side might be merged successfully with the previous poem.

But this would seemingly create its own difficulties if further down the track, the poet decided to change the order of one of those merged poems — so you win one, lose one.

I'm thinking maybe I'll settle for numbering the pages manually. A bit more effort but at least it's a work-around.

Many thanks, you've helped - I simply couldn't see any reason for my particular problem arising. 

Cheers,

Ralph

 

[MikeTO]

Hi Ralph, I recommend creating your book as a single document instead of using the Books feature. That would let you start chapters on either side of the page.

The Books feature is important for very complex documents that are too large to work on effectively at once or when you need to let somebody else edit chapter 1 while you're working on chapter 2. But if you're creating your book on your own and it doesn't have several hundred linked resources, it would be better to create it as a single document and save yourself the hassle.

[Wessman]

Thanks Mike,

Yes, I figured eventually that is the way to go, and I've finished setting the first third of the book with manual page numbers.

It occurred me to too that I can still make use of the book function as a way of finalising the final order of chapters / pages. Just say to an author, take no notice of the fact there are no page numbers at present, is this the final order of the poems in your ms? Once that's nailed, then add the page numbers manually.

Learning as I go

Cheers,

Ralph

[MikeTO]

I wouldn't use the Book function to test the order of chapters with the author. It's easy to move pages around in Publisher. Just select all the pages for chapter 17 and drag them to the new position in the book. It would be easier if we could see sections in the Pages panel and collapse them, making drag re-ordering easier. Let's cross our fingers for v3. 🙂 

[SueC]

I am encountering this same issue. I commonly will have chapters or sections that I need to start on the left because I want to have an image go across the spread as part of the design of the section or chapter start. I have a book that will have probably more than 500 images in it. It will be a big file, and for books that big I usually will use the book feature as I'd rather lose one chapter to a corrupt file than the whole book! This is my first project in Affinity.

So what size file is too big to do as one file?

This has been quite the eye-opening experience so far and I am only on chapter 3! My biggest complaint so far is that it's so SLOW for me as I am having to look up or query every unexpected thing. Also I dont know the time saving keyboard shortcuts I am used to—and there sure aren't enough! 

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, SueC said:

So what size file is too big to do as one file?

There isn't a single answer to that question and it has a lot to do with your specific computer hardware and with your book's layout. I noticed a big difference in performance when I upgraded from an Intel MacBook Pro to an M1 Pro so a book that might have been slow on my old computer is fast on my newer one.

I have two books on the go, both are single documents. One has 160K words in several stories with several hundred images that I haven't optimized yet so they're currently 14GB. Editing that book is fast on my MacBook Pro.

The other book is only 80K words in the same number of stories with the same number of images, although some of the tiny ones are used many times. These images are only 33MB altogether (MB, not GB). However, this book is much slower to edit because many of the small images are in the middle of a paragraph. Publisher can get sluggish when you have a lot of inline images between characters rather than in paragraphs all by themselves.

The length of the stories is another factor. If your book has 20 chapters and they're all in one story in one document it will be slower to edit than if you divide that story into 20 stories.

If you need to start chapters on the left, I recommend creating it as a single document. Create a separate story (series of linked text frames) for each chapter. Link all of the images, don't embed them.

Cheers

[SueC]

Thanks, Mike. You're very helpful!

For this I think I will stick to the separate docs and use the book feature for now. I can find work arounds for my cross gutter images spanning chapters! Ha. Like just splitting the image and marrying up the halves in the separate docs by eyeball. I haven't found any way to find exact coordinates for where things are on the page (does that exist?).

I am still on a 2019 Intel MB-pro, but it's maxed out on ram etc. I've not had too many issues. But good to know about the inline images being an issue. I have mine mostly not pinned, and none inline. This book won't be an ebook, which is when I'd do them inline. (Which is a whole other question.... like what IS the ebook workflow for Affinity users? Good thing I'm "retired".)

So far so good, just slower than I normally am, but that's due to me still trying to figure this out.

 

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, SueC said:

I haven't found any way to find exact coordinates for where things are on the page (does that exist?)

Yes, it's the Transform panel.

1 hour ago, SueC said:

what IS the ebook workflow for Affinity users?

There isn't one at this time so you'd have to use a PDF to eBook converter.

[Oufti]

On 1/10/2023 at 10:17 PM, MikeTO said:

It would be easier if we could see sections in the Pages panel and collapse them, making drag re-ordering easier. Let's cross our fingers for v3. 🙂 

That's definitely something I'd vote for too! 

[phps]

It seems to be working for me, using the Book feature, to combine chapters that start on the left and chapters that start on the right, using Document Settings for each chapter, and setting Facing Pages, Arrange Horizontally, Start on Left, for chapters that start on the left. At least so far it outputs a PDF that looks right. I'm using three masters, one for "start right", one for "start left" and one for "interior".