Affinity Publisher for Books?

[LucMeister]

Hi there,

 

I hope this thread isn't all too dumb

I'm interested in Publisher, but as there's no real product-page now I'm not sure if it's the right tool for my intended use. Because if it is, I'd like to benefit from the pre-order of course

 

I'd love to use it for layouting books. Is this a scenario this software fits in?

 

Best,

Lucas

[PghArtist]

Likewise, I am also interested in making photo books and wondering if Affinity Publisher is the right choice. Also, will there eventually by an Affinity Publisher for iPad version too?

[jmwellborn]

2 hours ago, LucMeister said:

Hi there,

 

I hope this thread isn't all too dumb

I'm interested in Publisher, but as there's no real product-page now I'm not sure if it's the right tool for my intended use. Because if it is, I'd like to benefit from the pre-order of course

 

I'd love to use it for layouting books. Is this a scenario this software fits in?

 

Best,

Lucas

 

20 minutes ago, PghArtist said:

Likewise, I am also interested in making photo books and wondering if Affinity Publisher is the right choice. Also, will there eventually by an Affinity Publisher for iPad version too?

Publisher works splendidly for books.  Suggest that you both go to the Forum section “Report Bugs in Affinity Publisher,” and then open the second entry. There you can download the latest free Beta version.  If you decide you like it, and if you hurry, you can then take advantage of the special discounted offer made to beta users for pre-order of the release version.  But only if you actually order before June 19.   Whatever you decide, I urge you to try it out!

A few months ago, way back in the beta process (even though we were carefully warned that we might have problems) I decided to test Publisher so I imported a very small book of 72 pages I had previously written and published using InDesign as a PDF, revised it, added 20 more pages, and included 97 color illustrations — most of which I vastly improved using Affinity Photo.  It was a joy to work on, turned out beautifully, and printed flawlessly.  

[LucMeister]

hi there jmwellborn,

 

thanks for your input!

I have to admit I'm in the Beta program for some months now. But I never had the time to truly check it. I made a book inside of LibreOffice which worked quite nicely, but lacked a bit here and there. It's only text, no images.

I hate to work in InDesign, that's why I chose LibreOffice instead; if you say I can really pull this off nicely in Publisher, I think I will just bite the bullet!

 

Best,

Lucas

[jmwellborn]

4 hours ago, LucMeister said:

hi there jmwellborn,

 

thanks for your input!

I have to admit I'm in the Beta program for some months now. But I never had the time to truly check it. I made a book inside of LibreOffice which worked quite nicely, but lacked a bit here and there. It's only text, no images.

I hate to work in InDesign, that's why I chose LibreOffice instead; if you say I can really pull this off nicely in Publisher, I think I will just bite the bullet!

 

Best,

Lucas

 Good!    Bet you never look back!!   

[v_kyr]

Depends on what you mean and understand by layouting books here. - Actually it can only deal with a single file document book layout handling and things like footnotes/endnotes aren't yet implemented.

[LucMeister]

16 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Depends on what you mean and understand by layouting books here. - Actually it can only deal with a single file document book layout handling and things like footnotes/endnotes aren't yet implemented.

Huh ok, that's kinda... bad. I don't have any footnotes except for page numbers. Is that something that's easily and not manually done?

 

Best,

Lucas

[v_kyr]

Page numbers and usual headers/footers etc. are no problem to setup, but auto creation of footnotes/endnotes isn't implemented so far. - So manually depends on how much/many you have to include of those, for academic books, thesis, articles writing, manuals and the like you have to add a lot of bibliographie or cross references etc., which can be painful to do all manually and costs time to fiddle around with to order them and bring onto pages. - Also structuring a book doc into separate related parts (title page, TOC, chapters, index ...and so on) so you can work separately on those parts isn't yet implemented.

[LucMeister]

Hi there v_kyr,

 

thanks for the implemention! It's more novel kinda stuff I'm doing, nothing too fancy. So mainly wall of text, page numbers, every now and then a new chapter that is a full page.

Chapter-Overview in the beginning is also there of course. In LibreOffice I could simply "link" things, so you click the chapter and it takes you there. Is this possible here, too?

 

Best,

Lucas

[v_kyr]

Well then it should fulfill your needs, give it a try.

[LucMeister]

Hi there v_kyr,

 

thanks again for your answer! I'm not really savy with this kinda software yet, and I'm nowhere near having enough time to really look into it as long as I can with the Beta, so I might really just bite the bullet.

 

What do you think might the roadmap be, that interesting features will get into the software? So far I own Affinity Photo for some time and some aspects of updates (especially format-support though) was rather sobering to say it nice.

 

Best,

Lucas

[JanChartrand]

I have tried twice to use affinity publisher for my travel book, photos and text. I love how it all lays out etc, but after I save and come back to the file later, it won't open. Says file is corrupt. I tried with a brand new file, same result. Any idea what could be happening?

[MikeTO]

4 hours ago, JanChartrand said:

I have tried twice to use affinity publisher for my travel book, photos and text. I love how it all lays out etc, but after I save and come back to the file later, it won't open. Says file is corrupt. I tried with a brand new file, same result. Any idea what could be happening?

Hi Jan and welcome to the forum.

Serif will want to know which version of Publisher you're using (1.10.6? 2.0.3? a different version?) and which operating system you're using (macOS Ventura? Windows 11? etc)

What type of content did you add to your file before it became corrupted?

Are there any linked resources?

Are you able to upload a copy of the file here in public for others to test? If not, it's best to wait for Serif to reply and they might provide you with a private upload link.

Good luck!