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Creating a book with chapters


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Hi

 

I am used to using PagePlus 9 and use the book feature to stitch together many articles with photos from different authors and sources to make a school publication which is photo rich and can run to 90 pages plus at times.  The articles arrive randomly over time and the ability to create chapters and then re-order and re-index is invaluable.  Is the chapter feature available on Infinity Publisher?

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2 hours ago, Alastair Cook57 said:

I am used to using PagePlus 9 and use the book feature to stitch together many articles with photos from different authors and sources to make a school publication which is photo rich and can run to 90 pages plus at times.  The articles arrive randomly over time and the ability to create chapters and then re-order and re-index is invaluable.  Is the chapter feature available on Affinity Publisher?

Currently no. From your described workflow I doubt that Publisher would be able to handle it without a lot of work from your end. A chapter based system would be a real boon not only for yourself. I much prefer to wait until everything is in and am constantly disappointed by the real world.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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  • 7 months later...

To Affinity: are there plans to provide a facility to create a book from a series of chapters in separate files? I previously used indesign but have created a large book on Designer in eight chapters and am now concerned that I have wasted a lot of my time. I didn't think to check whether this facility is available as I assumed that it was as everyone is writing how much better Designer is than inDesign

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27 minutes ago, PeterHolmes said:

I didn't think to check whether this facility is available as I assumed that it was as everyone is writing how much better Designer is than inDesign

If you are the only person working on a book, then there is very little or no value in having a book facility in Publisher.

If you have a team of people working on a book then that facility is rather important.

If you split your book in chapters then you can easily PDF each individual chapter and put the chapters together at the end.

You should be aware that the latest Publisher beta has an option of importing other Publisher documents.

DOCUMENT -> Add Pages from File ...

This feature is still quite buggy but you can start testing it and submitting bug reports in Publisher Beta forums.

Finally, this is not a must have feature, by any means, especially now that we can import other documents, unless, like I said earlier you produce books in a team.

2017 27” iMac 4.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 • Radeon Pr 580 8GB • 64GB • Ventura 13.6.4.

iPad Pro (10.5-inch) • 256GB • Version 16.4

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I'm someone who makes books in a team (and, frankly, it seems this is a very common publishing situation, unless your are self-publishing your novel). And I add my voice to the request for a book feature. Unfortunately, pasting separate PDF files is not feasible if you want to keep indexes and cross-references in synch, and importing is not practical for frequent updates of the book during work.

Paolo

 

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  • 4 months later...

I have a book that is currently in rough draft.  It is currently in InDesign (the old creative suite), and I would like to migrate it to Affinity Publisher.  It's presently a hobby, but I'd like to turn into a small business when I retire in several years.

I've purchased Publisher, and really like it so far.  Udemy.com has a good course that teaches the Affinity suite.  My book is about 650 pages, has about 300 illustrations (some vector and some raster), and about 150 tables.  In InDesign, it is broken up into about 20 chapters, which are separate files.  These separate files make it easier to manage illustration links, the sections of text, and the index that spans the whole book.  Plus, I can imagine that trying to edit a single file that big would bring any program to its knees -- whether it is an Adobe or Affinity product!

I work in a team, but the text and artwork are all done separately before they get to page layout.  Separate files for working as a team isn't a major interest for me, but I expect it is for others.

For these reasons, I add my voice to the above and request that Affinity add to Publisher the ability to create a book from multiple chapter files -- including managing a Table of Contents and an Index across the individual chapter files.

Affinity makes great products, and I appreciate all the work you're doing to make a better product at a great price!

Best Regards,
Mark

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  • 1 month later...
21 hours ago, ErrkaPetti said:

I think the main workforce in the Affinity Publisher team is just now focusing on the iPad version of Affinity Publisher, so, new features may be a little delayed...

For me, a full blown DTP app on iPad will be awesome!

If this is true, rather than simple speculation, it does suggest that the loyal Windows users who have come forward from PagePlus are being overlooked.

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  • 3 weeks later...
1 hour ago, Daniel Gibert said:

I stand for a book/chapter management system. We do team editing of catalogs and to have page numbers and styles coordinated on multiple documents for each catalog product family is key for any team workflow.

I cosign. It does help my workflow especially dealing with tons of pages and chapter. This is the only feature that made me hesitate to fully scrap my indesign subscription.

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  • 2 weeks later...
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  • 3 months later...

Add another request for this feature to be added. I have a 400+ page book project with 2000+ graphic items currently in the dreadfully supported QuarkXPress. Although I'm aching to dump Quark, I would need an actual demonstration to believe any Windows product could be efficiently used with a single file book of this size. Lacking that demonstration, I would configure the project as a number of separate files. Support for multi file TOC and index creation, and pdf output would be necessary in any competitive product intended for the production of large books.

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13 hours ago, rufus said:

Add another request for this feature to be added. I have a 400+ page book project with 2000+ graphic items currently in the dreadfully supported QuarkXPress. Although I'm aching to dump Quark, I would need an actual demonstration to believe any Windows product could be efficiently used with a single file book of this size. Lacking that demonstration, I would configure the project as a number of separate files. Support for multi file TOC and index creation, and pdf output would be necessary in any competitive product intended for the production of large books.

Read! Read! You say the truth. I tested this year with a catalog with 250 pages and around 1200 photos and Publisher, although much better than InDesign, has its little strugles becouse of document size. I'd love this year to make the general catalog (480 pages - 4900 images) in Publisher but if I cant divide in chapter documents will meant that will slow down the performance and we will no be able to work multiple people simultaneously on the project. We will try to manually split the document but it is gonna be a pain, for sure. Specially because we will need to manually bookmar the PDF once we join all the parts, manually check pagination and manually fil lthe TOC. 

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  • 8 months later...

I don't usually work in a team but I still need to group pages into chapters. A book of short stories, for example,  will often need to be have those stories moved around. Having them in chapter groups would allow for the TOC the update the order and the page number. Presently I have to select the pages in a chapter and drag them to a new location which is awkward and doesn't always work. 

I would also love to have a document that could reference exterior files that could be worked on by separate people and updated in one document that could be exported as a Pdf for printing. I work for a magazine doing design and if that were possible they would switch  to Publisher gladly I think as their current workflow uses Quark which to be honest, I HATE using.

I hope I explained that properly! 

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  • 4 months later...

Yes, please consider adding this, not even so much for workflow as for performance. The last longer book I edited and formatted with Publisher, which I was glad to do, went smooth until about 300-400 pages in. As I imported the author's later chapters, Publisher got much slower, and I actually could not drag the scrollbar down past a certain page number (around 400s).

The scrollbar, which typically gets smaller the longer a document or webpage is, couldn't get any smaller, and I guess that prohibited accuracy. And since it opens at the top of the document and you can't edit a book in a day, that was a massive pain.

I had to hold down arrows or use a mouse with a wheel to get to the subsequent pages. Having individual chapters would solve both of these issues easily, as 10-30 pages is a much easier load on the software. This may be fixed now since it was a little over a year ago, but I am about to edit another long novel-style book and would love to have everything go better. Just trying to prepare ahead!

I have a production-grade custom computer too...built to handle intense music production and video editing, so it's not a machine capability thing. I also love Affinity products and turn many people onto the company...even traditional painters with iPads and Apple pens 🤗 Plus, I just bought my third Designer license last month (Windows, Mac, and iPad). I'm not going anywhere, but would love the extra help!

For now, I will try multiple docs and use the "import" feature as suggested on other topic threads.

Edited by natecombsmedia
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For four hundred pages try using the pages display; just type in page 300 and hit the enter key.

1334540554_ScreenShot2022-01-18at1_36_41PM.png.0557acd46f376636896b75a558ef2ecd.png

And for what it is worth I find that what ever page I have visible when I save the document is the page that document will open to when I open it again.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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  • 1 month later...
On 2/28/2022 at 10:00 AM, heidi.darley said:

I would also like to request that book and separate chapter/part management capability be added to Affinity Publisher, PagePlus worked wonderfully. Thanks.

Actually, if you click on the link in the post above this one, you will find an interesting paragraph, accompanied by a preview image.

Quote

No sooner had we finished the Workbook than the Dev team had come up with a book management feature for Publisher—the fast pace of Affinity development in action! Here’s a sneak peek screenshot of the new Books Panel expected sometime after 1.9 release.

So it looks like some sort of Books Panel is expected to happen at some point. We just don't know when.

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