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Just testing new program with files from a previous book publication - one or two early questions:

Will I be able to import .ppp files, or do I have to convert to .pdf?

I can't find the book publishing/ 'new book' option - is this hidden away?

Lookig forward to some guidance.

Very pleased that I ahve now been able to download and looking forward to the finished version in due course.

Mike

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Thank you for your swift response.  I am concerned that there is no news as to whether a book publishing mode is to be introduced as per Page Plus.  It does seem odd that a well trumpeted new 'Publisher' program will not have the facility to publish  a 'print ready' book. It would be great if you could escalate this for me.  Many thanks, Mike

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I wasn't expecting to see designer with master pages.. no ebook export... a lot of self publishers out there could benefit from what page plus offered with this modern approach... just looks like a graphics package.  I can design my flyers, etc in Designer, so i don't need this product unless it allows a full blown publication.  PDF export gets slammed for ebooks, better to have the epub export format.   They shouldn't have retired PagePlus if they're not going build on that with a fresh modern approach.

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20 hours ago, Fixx said:

Nowadays book designers usually create a book as a single file plus separate covers. Publisher should be powerful enough for that. Just export press ready PDF.

Ebooks would be best created with dedicated ebook app. I recommend Jutoh.

Thats not accurate in my experience; working with individual files for chapters makes managing books much easier. 

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Have to agree with some of the above who would expect complete book publishing export--including eBook--from Publisher as you can find with publishing software like Vellum (which approaches both print and eBook production). After all, this software is called Affinity Publisher. 

I find this software to be typical of Serif: well-designed, pretty, comprehensive...and intimidating to someone who can, but won't, take the time to learn the ropes,  let alone the fine threads, of this impressive software unless it has the payoff I require as a busy independent publisher with three books in the wings (one of them illustrated).  Serif missed the boat with previous publishing software, but hits the mark when it comes to titles like Drawplus and the Affinity group. If the only export were to .pdf files (with much higher resolution than the Aff. Pub. offers at present) and set up for Print and Ebook, I would put my money--and my time--on the table right now. But that also would have to include functional templates included for print and Ebook production--and not as an additional purchase.  Because this is early in the app history, let's hope this will be considered. Otherwise, I am not sure who the target consumer group is for this product. Mainstream or production teams? Depends upon how much money Serif wants to make and whether it will move the cross-hairs from elite in-crowd to ordinary folks.

That said, I tested the Beta software and found everything installed easily and ran smoothly. The sample brochure exported to .pdf quickly and completely. I didn't find that the table of contents were linked, however, surprisingly, to interior content. I opened the .pdf in Adobe Acrobat and enjoyed the full screen presentation. At full screen, the elegant type font was tiny. Increasing resolution will fuzz up the pictures because the .dpi settings in Aff. Pub. are too restrictive, the max being 400 dpi.  I did not print the results.

Hope my input helps. In summary:

  1. the sample brochure converted nicely to .pdf but should have allowed for higher resolution so that pages can be magnified by the viewer.
  2. this Publisher program should publish more than fancy brochures and take on the print (fiction and textbooks) and eBook  pub market. 
  3. Aff Pub should decide who its market is and let us know, too.

 

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On 8/30/2018 at 2:56 PM, Fixx said:

 I recommend Jutoh. 

 

Ultimate Ebook Creator is nice.  It has dynamic text wrap around photos and interactive text.  A few nice exports too.  You can get it on Amazon for $25.

I have never tried Xara or the free Scribus Publisher.

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21 hours ago, David Edge said:

Me too re books. However the Book option in print would be close enough for me if only it allowed you to choose the number of sheets per signature, which would not be the toughest piece of coding in the world!

I totally agree with this! It seems Affinity Publisher is building an app to be a great UI layout designer and brochure layout software. Nice and useful direction, but, print and digital publishers need more from a publishing app. Being able to control the number of pages in signature units goes a long way in the Print Book option. I think this is a basic request as well as eBook export. Those 2 basic features would position AP for a competitive option over other industry publishing apps.

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On 8/31/2018 at 7:33 PM, Publicity said:

I opened the .pdf in Adobe Acrobat and enjoyed the full screen presentation. At full screen, the elegant type font was tiny. Increasing resolution will fuzz up the pictures because the .dpi settings in Aff. Pub. are too restrictive, the max being 400 dpi.  I did not print the results.

You can enter another value than the ones in the menu.

For example, try 650 DPI and rasterise all: you'll have full pages converted to images at 650 DPI.

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There is no reason why one can‘t create individual chapter files in Publisher and then merge them together as PDFs (even Preview will let you do this). Indesign does automatic pagination across book files, but it‘s perfectly possible to use Section Manager in Publisher to manually start the pagination at the right page in each chapter. It‘s a bit more fiddly, but perfectly do-able. 

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I guess I am on the same bandwagon. I published via amazon the following dictionaries: https://www.amazon.com/Dicoklein-lexique-medical-Vol-1-DICOKLEIN/dp/1539985415/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1535978840&sr=8-7&keywords=dicoklein

Please click on ‘Look inside’ and go to page 7 to have look what I mean. Total number of pages is around 600 per volume. All the titles and text around the content is made in Serif PP. The content itself (translations, lines that are alternately gray/white is importede to PP from PDF-files. I think actually with APublisher this is not possible to produce).

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As someone who's done dozens of books in all formats, print and digital, using InDesign, I'll add my remarks to this book publishing discussion.

1. Writing as chapters versus the book in one file. With ID I write (or layout for other publishers) the entire book as one document but break the chapters into separate text-frame flows. Initially, as I do the layout, adding graphics, I have an excess of pages in each set of frames. That way, adding a graphic to chapter one has no impact on the pagination for chapter 21. It's also necessary to do that to get ID to do endnotes right. I will be blunt. I will flat-out not use or recommend an publishing app that forcing me to do editing, proofing, and layout in chapter-length segments. I don't thing that is going to be a problem with Affinity Publisher. But I know that if it becomes little more than a brochure-making app, it won't sell.

I can give an illustration why I feel so strongly. Suppose some word in an entire book needs changing. That is a very common problem. With that entire book handled by ID, I simply do a document-length search and replace (rather than a story-length one). I typically could do that in less than a minute. With each chapter in a separate document, I might need to do a dozen or more searches and take perhaps 15-20 minutes. I won't put up with that nor will I put up with some complicated process to create and merge contents, an index, or pages into a PDF. I want the book to be in and managed as one document. Again, I don't think that'll be an issue with AP.

2. Printed book v. ebook. ID lets me create multiple versions of a book from one master document. That means a print-ready PDF, along with reflowable and fixed-layout epubs. (I handle Kindle editions by sending Amazon a reflowable epub for conversion.) That seems to work well enough. Again, I will be blunt. The books I write and edit myself and those I do for other publishers are revised and updated up until the day they go off to be printed. I am not going to klutz with any workflow that means I have to do that editing in one app for the print version and another for the digital version. I am not anal retentive. I won't put myself through all the niggling, detail-mongering that maintaining two versions requires. And why should I? ID can manage to output multiple formats from one source. Any other app that I might adopt or recommend must do the same. 

3. PDF as input text. My response to any mention of that is, "are you insane?" PDF means "Page Description Format." That means it has already determined how a page is formatted, so why would I want to import it into a page layout program? I use page layout apps to take unformatted or poorly formatted text from Word and other sources, turning it into something that's appealing. I do not want any prior attempt at laying that text out to intrude. It only gets in the way. I already spent quite a bit of time trying to get rid of extraneous Word formatting. And yeah, I realize that in a lot of businesses, all they have is a PDF they want to tweak. They want to be able to import that, ignoring how ugly it may look, and make that tweak. That's fine for them. I just don't want to make that my work flow.

I hope I don't sound too negative. Given my work, I'll continue to use ID and may even continue to use it for all the books I layout. I am well past ID's initially steep learning curve. But as a writer, I would love to have a powerful page layout app that I could recommend to independent writers, one that doesn't have as steep a learning curve as ID or ID's inflated, $240-a-year subscription cost.

--Michael W. Perry, Inkling Books

 

 

 

 

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41 minutes ago, Mike Perry said:

I won't put myself through all the niggling, detail-mongering that maintaining two versions requires. And why should I? ID can manage to output multiple formats from one source

In my experience ebook publishing is exactly niggling detail-mongering job. But then it has been a while since I looked at InDy epub export. Maybe it is ok now (?)

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1 hour ago, Jayden Brand said:

Can Publisher import .docx documents? Or how would I go about doing this without copy and paste? I want to preserve all my settings and current fonts...

Today, no. In the future, it might, I suppose.

For now, you'd needed to use copy/paste (which might preserve settings and fonts, you'd have to try it and see), or save your file as an RTF file, which is supported via Text > Insert text from file.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4

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I tried to use it with a word/RTF file and inserted it as you recomended it.

But how can I insert the whole text so that all the pages come automaticly after each other, so that I don´t have to always chain them in sequence with always building new Text frames.

Edited by siloia
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Ironic, really. When the name of a software is "PUBLISHER" - it suggests to me the publishing of books and, by extension, ebooks in this era of digital online publishing and sales.

I don't need a publishing company to print brochures, just a printer will do...

That's why I can't imagine why a software that calls itself Publisher would leave out any feature having to do with the printing or digital publishing of books. I own "Designer" and I use it for designing. My intention, as a writer and publisher of books, was to buy this software for book "publishing." :) Color me weird.

Good points were made already by credible contributors with professional experience in book design, layout and exporting. I'd like to add to that:

When writer's apps such as Scrivener etc., already have all of the major exporting formats and features covered, it would be a shock for any new contender to disregard what its competitors offer and deny that to its potential new customers. Let's face it, if Affinity PHOTO did not borrow heavily from Photoshop, few of us would have found a reason to buy it. Likewise, this app should be a super-charged offshoot of Quark and InDesign.

I like the look and feel of this new Affinity Publisher software, but I'm surprised to hear that book publishing was not a priority for its rollout against its main competitor.

Again, given the name itself, I find it ironic. However, I know books and newspapers aren't what they used to be, and maybe this went into the decision making process.

My BOOK (created with Publisher, Designer & Photo):
Clearing a Path to Joy (And finding contentment along the way)

My WEBSITE (also developed using Affinity apps):
www.RolandK.ca — "Relentless adventures in self-expression"

[Power Mac & Intel PC (HighSierra/Monterey/Win 10]

 

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8 hours ago, Thomas-B said:

Please click on ‘Look inside’ and go to page 7 to have look what I mean. Total number of pages is around 600 per volume. All the titles and text around the content is made in Serif PP. The content itself (translations, lines that are alternately gray/white is importede to PP from PDF-files. I think actually with APublisher this is not possible to produce).

You can do this using "Next style" in the styles and "Apply xxx and Next Style" (but I don't understant yet why it's sometime unavalaible, if it's because the applied style of the selection is the same, it should be available too), and "Decorations".

2018-09-03_235957.png.7c58a45d5470d7700b8f56decac28bdd.png

2018-09-03_235743.thumb.png.50e79ba2906a5daa9b25da28597600f6.png

test_alternance.afpub

 

NB. I don't understand why you wrote 293'130 mots (we use a no breaking small space between number, not a quote), and for the back cover, it's better to keep articles with their name "la pathologie", "la gynécologie", "de la médecine", etc. Oups ! :S I shouldn't work here…

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