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Is Affinity Publisher suitable for electronic publications - or not?


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Hi.  I have used Serif products in the past, including their PagePlus program for both print and website design, which was very good at the time.

In more recent times, I did have a play with the Affinity Designer program, but the lack of an image trace program made it unusable.

Okay enough of previous history, I am now seeking a publishing program that can do the usual page layout, mixing text, images and graphics, automatically add page numbers etc.  Obviously it must output to regular physical print., but also to electronic print such as ebooks and kindle.  I am aware that Affinity Publisher doesn't currently have the ability to publish to epub or similar electronic formats and looking at some of the forum posts, it is something that has been requested for years, but never added.

 

Okay here is my question, aimed specifically at those that either produce ebooks or epubs.  Have you found a workable solution for being able to use Affinity Publisher to produce usable output, or would I realistically be looking at another solution like InDesign or Quark?.  I have Calibre, Scrivener and Jutoh on my systems which in theory can create ebooks but obviously I don't want to go 'down the rabbit hole' of working with Afffinity Publisher to find it wholly unsuitable.

My output will feature  lots of images, infographics, illustrations and diagrams (think technical), so it important all those can be handled in both print and eformats.

All help, advice and guidance would be greatly welcomed. You guys are the real experts in using this software, so know its capabilities.  I am aware of the pricing differences between Serif and the alternatives out there and aware that most offer free trials, but need a little help.

 

Thanks

 

Will

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Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, @Planet. :)

Do you have a particular reason for considering a move away from PagePlus? As far as I’m aware, even the most recent Windows 11 update (widely reported as being quite troublesome) hasn’t broken anything for PPX9 users.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.5.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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Posted (edited)
19 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, @Planet. :)

Do you have a particular reason for considering a move away from PagePlus? As far as I’m aware, even the most recent Windows 11 update (widely reported as being quite troublesome) hasn’t broken anything for PPX9 users.

To be honest I had not even thought about using PagePlus..  Know I still have it around somewhere, but think I stopped using it years ago when responsive web sites started becoming the norm and started using another solution for web site building.

Will certainly dig it out of its hiding place and revisit it.  Seems weird that Serif omitted electronic output from its Affinity publishing program when they already had the technology in previous programs.  With hugely rising postal costs, electronic delivery is becoming the preferred medium of choice for many publishing houses now.

Thanks for the input.  Appreciate it.. 👍

 

Edited by Planet
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8 minutes ago, Planet said:

Seems weird that Serif omitted electronic output from its Affinity publishing program

Hello @Planet,

from what I observed in the forum over the last years and following the development of the Affintiy apps I do not think they omitted something. They started completely annew. The company is building it from scratch. Most likely this means they are going to implement features that where available in the past one by one over time. Print has been their first priority.

Just a guess.

d.

Affinity Suite on Windows (V2) and iPad (V2). Beta testing when available.

Windows 11 64-bit - Core i7 - 16GB - Intel HD Graphics 4600 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M
iPad pro 9.7" + Apple Pencil

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27 minutes ago, dominik said:

Hello @Planet,

from what I observed in the forum over the last years and following the development of the Affintiy apps I do not think they omitted something. They started completely annew. The company is building it from scratch. Most likely this means they are going to implement features that where available in the past one by one over time. Print has been their first priority.

Just a guess.

d.

Hi @dominik

Briefly looking through the forums, they have been promising that epub export for years now but have not yet delivered.  I'd hate to think how many potential customers they have lost over those years.  🙄

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1 hour ago, Planet said:

Briefly looking through the forums, they have been promising that epub export for years now but have not yet delivered.

In March of this year, after Canva bought Serif, they announced some `pledges` for features that would be released `within the next year` as free updates to V2. Export to ePub is explicitly mentioned. Such a time frame is highly questionable. I also assume that the ePub export will be quite basic (fixed layout, no support for reflowable) and buggy in the first released version.

Below you've got link to these `pledges` if you interested @Planet

https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/press/newsroom/affinity-and-canva-pledge/

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37 minutes ago, bbrother said:

In March of this year, after Canva bought Serif, they announced some `pledges` for features that would be released `within the next year` as free updates to V2. Export to ePub is explicitly mentioned. Such a time frame is highly questionable. I also assume that the ePub export will be quite basic (fixed layout, no support for reflowable) and buggy in the first released version.

Below you've got link to these `pledges` if you interested @Planet

https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/press/newsroom/affinity-and-canva-pledge/

I wish I'd got a quid for every time a software house had promised software within any given timescales, or indeed promoted features that never finally materialised.  Despite this I will keep an open mind on Affinity coming through - eventually.! 

Fortunately this thread  has re-acquainted me with PagePlus which works without issues  on Windows 10 and has both fixed and flowable epub export.

 

Thanks to everyone for their help and suggestions so far.

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2 hours ago, Planet said:

they have been promising that epub export for years

I doubt that they 'promised' to implement such a feature. The usual wording is that they look into implementing something like this. Serif is very reluctant about concrete timescales.

In regard to the above mentioned 'pledges' (from March 2024): variable font support was introduced already. Multi page spreads are in preparation for the upcoming beta release. You possibly can look forward to the implementation of epub export at a certain point in the not so far future.

d.

Affinity Suite on Windows (V2) and iPad (V2). Beta testing when available.

Windows 11 64-bit - Core i7 - 16GB - Intel HD Graphics 4600 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M
iPad pro 9.7" + Apple Pencil

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1 minute ago, Planet said:

Fortunately this thread  has re-acquainted me with PagePlus which works without issues  on Windows 10 and has both fixed and flowable epub export.

Good to hear that you have a workable solution for now.

Cheers,
d.

Affinity Suite on Windows (V2) and iPad (V2). Beta testing when available.

Windows 11 64-bit - Core i7 - 16GB - Intel HD Graphics 4600 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M
iPad pro 9.7" + Apple Pencil

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6 hours ago, bbrother said:

In March of this year, after Canva bought Serif, they announced some `pledges` for features that would be released `within the next year` as free updates to V2.

That isn't quite what they said. Specifically, it was:

Quote

 

We’re looking forward to accelerating the rollout of highly requested features such as variable font support, blend and width tools, auto object selection, multi-page spreads, ePub export and much more. 

These additions will further cement Affinity as the best advanced design suite on the market and will be released over the coming year as free updates to V2.

 

There is no mention of "within the next year" or any other specific time frame.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.5.5 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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ll 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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6 minutes ago, bbrother said:

Within the next year, or over the coming year or at all. Whatsoever, once again tales from moss and fern that does not mean nothing.

Did you really mean to use a double negative?

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.5.5 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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ll 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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