Book File in Publisher?

[Manege]

Hi there, I've switched over from indesign and immediately missing one function. 
The way I used to create a book is, creating every chapter as a document and putting them later together in a book file. 
In this way it is much clearer and it is also easier to change the order of the individual chapters.

Is there a similar feature in Publisher or what approach would you suggest? 
Thank you for your time. 
Best, Manege

[Fixx]

No such feature yet. You have to put all content to one file OR manually keep separate chapter files in sync.

[Manege]

Thanks for the feedback. 
I've tried to work within a single file and use the "Section Manager" to keep everything organized but unfortunately it is not very useful as you can not just drag and drop a section to change the order or just work with a single section by simple clicking on it for example. In a book with hundreds of pages and images it quickly becomes confusing having all pages in a single file... 

 

[garrettm30]

My feeling so far is that the Section Manager is rather limited in utility at the moment. It can be used for managing changes of pagination and for use with inserting a field. I can't think of another reason. But at least with the feature in place now, it has room to grow in the future, such being able to drag and drop, which is a very useful suggestion. I would also like to see some kind of visual grouping in the Pages studio of the sections.

The idea of the book feature from several documents has been brought up before, but I do not remember seeing any confirmation from developers that they are considering the idea or hope to implement it at a later time. Or maybe I have forgotten some statement; I am so forgetful.

In my work, I would use the book feature only rarely, but would be very glad for it on those times when I do need it.

[curtsheller]

I use / used InDesign's book feature on ALL books.

Another side benefit for creating separate files for chapters is file corruption. It limits the impact of having all chapters in one file. This happened to me with a 90 page book that got corrupted or confused to the point it would not fully load. And, I had to go back 5 days to get a file that would open and not freeze Publisher.

Re-creating book from that publisher file and some PDF files and using separate chapters to limit any impact it happens again.

A juggling task to keep page numbers in sections synced by hand. And, forget about automatically generating a TOC or Index file. Or, links to different section and chapters in different files, or updating or changing master files. At, least styles can be imported.

Can't risk it all in one file any more - not safe yet and or I don't have confidence in Publisher yet. Converted 5 previous books and a few hundred smaller documents before this happed. Have taken the same approach with limiting the number of artboards in the placed Designer files. Seems Resource Manager needs a bit more work to be really useful.

[Manege]

I haven't worked with publisher in a while but now I'm about to start a new book project. 

Does anyone know if there is something new about this Topic? 

[dominik]

7 minutes ago, Manege said:

I haven't worked with publisher in a while but now I'm about to start a new book project. 

Does anyone know if there is something new about this Topic? 

Hello @Manege,

no, I haven't seen any news on this.

There was recently added the ability to merge APub files. This is not really a book feature because the merged files are by no means linked to their original files. But this could be used to keep chapters in seperate files and merge them together in one final step. (I have in mind to test this to see how page numbers and TOC work with this concept but haven't had the time so far).

d.

[Sephen]

I'm also still waiting for this function.

[Manege]

On 1/31/2020 at 10:48 AM, dominik said:

Hello @Manege,

no, I haven't seen any news on this.

There was recently added the ability to merge APub files. This is not really a book feature because the merged files are by no means linked to their original files. But this could be used to keep chapters in seperate files and merge them together in one final step. (I have in mind to test this to see how page numbers and TOC work with this concept but haven't had the time so far).

d.

Thanks for the feedback. 

[dominik]

Just now, Manege said:

Thanks for the feedback. 

Hello @Manege,

in the mean time I played a little with a short document consiting of three documents that were merged together. I especially was interested how a table of content might work and it did. With a little planning (text styles) this could work as a very basic book feature. But I would not consider this as a serious solution for now. I'd rather stick with one long book file until this is implemented properly.

d.

[PaoloT]

A good compromise might be being able to access the .afpub file, as you do, for example, with Scrivener files. At least on the Mac, these are bundle files, that is, folders that the system sees as single files.

Assuming the file structure allows for this, being able to access this bundle with the Show Package Content command in the Finder would allow access to the separate sections/chapters as individual files. In case of file damage, you would be able to recover all the non-damaged parts, and immediately rebuild the Publisher file – minus the damaged part.

I use the Book feature in ID for all my works, being long books with chapters requiring separate reuse and work from different translators and proofreaders. However, if Publisher could export separate sections as individual files, and import/replace them once edited externally, it would be the same as a Book feature.

Having all in the same document would allow navigation via a TOC tree. I would love this outline-like feature. If separate management of chapters as individual files would also be granted, this would be the best of all worlds.

Paolo

 

[Rosie Haller]

We create magazines in InDesign, 80 pages plus. Each issue is made up of 8-10 separate files and coordinated with the "book" feature. I see that Publisher doesn't have this yet. Has anyone had any luck keeping the several Publisher files separate, while maintaining page numbering? 

Also, our editors use InCopy for copy fitting. Is there a decent workaround for Publisher?

[Gaunilo]

This book feature would be a great boon. 
There are multiple ways to integrate this in your workflow.

Overall it would be a great addition.

[dominik]

1 hour ago, Rosie Haller said:

Has anyone had any luck keeping the several Publisher files separate, while maintaining page numbering? 

Hello @Rosie Haller,

welcome to the forum.

As I wrote a couple of postings above I tried merging multiple documents and table of contents and page numbering work correctly in the merged file. What I mean is that page numbers are applied correctly after the merge. Within the single documents each document starts at page 1 unless you add an offset.

But I do not encourage you to work that way right now. This was merely a test and is far from a true book feature.
I do not know what they have up their sleeves. But I could imagine that at some point they introduce something like linked Publisher files similar to linked image files.

Cheers,
d.

[Rosie Haller]

On 2/27/2020 at 10:50 AM, dominik said:

Hello @Rosie Haller,

welcome to the forum.

As I wrote a couple of postings above I tried merging multiple documents and table of contents and page numbering work correctly in the merged file. What I mean is that page numbers are applied correctly after the merge. Within the single documents each document starts at page 1 unless you add an offset.

But I do not encourage you to work that way right now. This was merely a test and is far from a true book feature.
I do not know what they have up their sleeves. But I could imagine that at some point they introduce something like linked Publisher files similar to linked image files.

Cheers,
d.

Thank you.

I'm trying something out that I think might work. I've created a master document with all the pages I need. I have two separate documents where I'm laying out stories. I'm placing the single story documents in the master document. They update automatically when I make changes in the smaller story files.