How to export book of chapters with uninterrupted spreads

[cwoodhou]

I have a 300-page book made up of 30 chapters. Each chapter used a template and starts on the right hand page. When I put these together in a book and export as PDF, I would like the pages to switch sides, as required (and as InDesign did automatically).

How do I do that, so the book is a continuous set of two-page spreads?

[walt.farrell]

Are you using Publisher (V1) or Publisher 2?

Publisher 2 has specific functions to combine Chapter files into a Book, and one of those functions does what you want via a setting in the Books panel, I think.

[cwoodhou]

I feel I need to add some more detail to this post. I have been writing books for 10 years, mostly in InDesign and switched to Publisher several years ago. I use the same master spreads for all my chapters. The inner margin of the spread is bigger than the outer. I switched to V2 and am now on the beta.

When writing a chapter, it always starts on the right, but, depending on the number of pages in a chapter, a new chapter within the book may start on the left. At present, Publisher's book output keeps the original chapter margins, so I can have different inner and outer margins on a spread. When I used InDesign, it automatically re-aligned the content between the margins if left hand pages needed to be right hand. Outputting book as PDF as chapter or pages does not seem to make a difference, the original chapter alignment is retained. I cannot even edit my pages to flip them over, as I would have to manually go into each chapter and say it starts on the left/right.... which I'm sure you realize is nonsense.

How do I accomplish continuous spreads in a book that honor the master spreads?

Edited February 27, 2023 by cwoodhou
clarification

[cwoodhou]

A fellow user pointed out the fix. You enable pad and merge within stray pages and export as pages, rather than chapters. That appears to give consistent margins throughout.

[LindaRushby]

I have a similar issue to this. I have a book of 5 sections and 24 chapters (counting the front matter as the first chapter and style source). Each section starts on the right hand (odd numbered) page, and I have inserted blank pages where necessary to achieve this, but the chapters ideally should follow straight on within the section.

I also have a master page spread for different left and right headers, with the book title on the left (even) and chapter title on the right (odd) page. There are also different masters (single page) for the first page of a section and the first page of a chapter, with no header on either.

I've previously used InDesign, which apparently handled all this automatically, but what I've noticed with Publisher (V2.6) is that when a chapter starts an the left of the spread, it appears on screen as a single right hand page but with an even page number, and that following pages in the chapter appear as spreads but with the odd pages on the left and even pages on the right. However, when the file is exported 'as pages' to pdf for printing, the odd and even page numbers appear correctly, but the headers are the wrong way round, ie the book title appears on the right and the chapter title on the left. This continues until there is a chapter starting on an odd-numbered page, when it flips back again.

Have you any suggestions for how to deal with this, other than having two sets of masters and applying them to the affected chapters individually as required on the final draft?

[MikeTO]

Hi Linda. I'm somewhat confused - sections are groupings of pages in a document and Chapters are separate documents in a Book. Are you saying that each Chapter document has 5 sections?

The Books feature does not support Chapters that can start on the left side of a spread. If this is how your book is structured you should consider merging all the Chapter documents together into a single document. I explain this in my Publisher manual which you can download free from this forum if you like.

Putting aside the Book issue, if you have some chapters in the merged document that start on the left and others on the right but you want to use a unique master layout for the first page in a chapter, you can:

• Create a chapter start master spread that has the layout for the first page but on both sides of the spread. They you would apply that master to only one side of a document spread. For example, if Master A is your normal spread layout and the other is Chapter Start and you want to start a chapter on the left side of a spread that uses Master A, right click the left side of the spread, choose Apply Master, and select Chapter Start. You shouldn't have to change any of the options in the dialog other than selecting the master. You would need to link the left and right side frames manually since they're from different masters.
• Or you could create two masters in addition to Master A, "Master A - start on left" and "Master A - start on right" that already have the frames linked and apply them to the entire spread.

There may be other options but this should get you started. But regardless, ensure that each chapter within the single single has its own story so that the last page of chapter 1 is not linked to the first page of chapter 2. Doing this will ensure that text doesn't flow through the chapter start master and perhaps end up on the wrong page.

Good luck.