Affinity Publisher: How To Lay Out A Book (Part 1)
Vložit
- čas přidán 19. 07. 2021
- Part 1 of laying out a complete book in Affinity Publisher, from start to finish.
Part 2: • Affinity Publisher: Ho...
Part 3: • Affinity Publisher: Ho...
Comment below, if there's anything else that you'd like to learn in Affinity Publisher.
When he says "You can work that one out!" I feel so empowered, honestly. This was a really helpful tutorial.
Hi Meisha,
Thanks very much for your comment.
I never write comments, but I have to say thank you for your great tutorial. It's so easy to follow, and I'm grateful that you spare us the things we don't want to know anyway. Now I can focus on the things a writer does: writing. :)
Hi there Jenny,
Thank you very much for your kind comment. I'm glad that my tutorial has helped you to get going on your publishing journey.
Regards to you.
This was PERFECT. Clear, step-by-step directions. Much appreciated!
Thank you. Quite helpful. Clear tutorial and easy to follow.
Rory thank you very much - simple and easy to understand.
Excellent, clear, instructions to begin using this software for creating books. Thanks so much for taking the time to give us this.
Hi there,
It's a great pleasure.
Kind regards to you.
Thanks Rory. Great Tute. Clear, simple and no faffing around!
Hi there,
Glad that my tutorial has helped you.
Regards
This was so incredibly helpful! Thank you so much!
Hi there Jules,
Thanks so much for your comment.
I'm glad that this tutorial has helped you.
Regards to you.
Brilliant, thanks. Lovely program.
Thanks, Rory. Your tutorial was very helpful.
Hi there Dr Kuldip,
Thanks very much for taking the time to comment on my tutorial.
I am glad that you have found it helpful.
Regards to you.
Super useful. Thanks for creating this!
Hi there Andy,
Thank you very much for your comment.
It's an honour to help people get to know this software and how to publish their books.
Regards to you.
Thank you so much my guy. You're helping me achieve my goals!
Hi there Arthur,
Thank you very much for sharing your appreciation.
It's a great pleasure to help others with knowledge I've gained over the years.
Regards to you.
Very helpful. thank you.
I bought this software last year about this time, and I've been looking for a clear tutorial to help me figure it out. This is the first one I've seen that I thought I could actually follow and lay out my book. Thanks so much!
Most of the people creating content on this topic aren't very good teachers! You should corner this market!
Hi there Ava,
Thank you very much for your comment.
I am sure there are other videos that you can watch to increase your knowledge of this software and how to lay out your book.
I purchase the Affinity publisher Workbook which has helped me to understand different concepts with the software and how to use it efficiently in different situations. If you are able I suggest that you get this workbook.
Hope you find solutions to laying out your book in the best way possible.
Regards to you.
@@RoryMolePublishing It appears the workbook is currently unavailable. Probably because Affinity just came out with V2 of their software. Thanks anyway for the recommendation.
Honestly, there are not many people creating content on Affinity, and even Affinity themselves don't go step-by-step how to create/format a book from a Word file.
I have been formatting my own books since 2011 and started doing it for clients in 2014. The caveat is that I've been using Word to do it, and well, Word isn't a typsetting sotware. Even though Amazon has made it possible to upload Word files because most of us know how to use it doesn't mean we should.
Ultimately, I'm looking for more control and a more professional finish for my clients. I chose Affinity Publisher to do that, but I keep hitting brick walls to learn how to use it.
Aside from your tutorials, it will most likely come down to me Googling every step of other things I may want to learn how to do in the software. I've done it before! Anyway, thanks again for your videos!
@@quietdeluxe, Hi there again,
Thanks very much for your comment again.
I fully understand your thoughts and need to be able to learn how to use any kind of software. I have found that for me, I want to achieve a certain kind of project and so I begin by digging into the software and figuring some things out as I go along. Also I watch some of the concepts on the training videos and practice them over and over again.
I purchased all the version 2 Affinity Products that came out recently. I've installed them on my Macbook Pro 2013 and had to upgrade to Big Sur operating system and it has worked out quite well. The only problem is that I have lost Adobe InDesign CS6 which was not 64 bit and won't work on Big Sur. I learned InDesign to lay out books some years back. Now I have Affinity and this is ok, but not quite where Adobe is, but almost there.
Version 2 is still new and there are a couple of bugs in the software that need to be ironed out and then it will be good to use for professional work.
I've just finished another layout for a client who is very happy with the book she got and this was all done in Affinity Publisher vresion 1.
I've also been experimenting with footnotes in importing them from a Word manuscript and it has been quite a journey, but I am winning. I would like to know what the thought processes are that the Affinity team have in developing their software. Most of their tutorials are around brochures and magazines, not type setting a book. So, I fully agree with you about learning how to use Affinity Publisher. Just practice and practice more and you will soon be well on your way to getting your books together.
Keep on going with it.
Hope you achieve what you have started out to do.
Kind Regards to you.
Rory
Thanks Rory! Very helpful ! you're a wonder
Hi there,
Thanks very much.
I just found this searching to design a book or layout a book to go to print and for digital, I'll go through it and hope it gives me the information needed to make it a reality, I got an approx 350 page book to redesign
Wow, I just started with Affinity Publisher, in order to layout a long book (created in Word), and this video has helped me a lot so far, I will be checking the next videos! Thanks so much Rory, I appreciate greatly your way of teaching.
Hi there Angie,
Thanks very much for your comment.
I'm really happy that you have received some benefit through this tutorial.
Hope you do well in your publishing journey.
Kind regards to you....
@@RoryMolePublishing Thank you. Blessings.
@@RoryMolePublishing By the way, how could one create a Text Style that includes images, for example, to create a Chapter title text style that includes an image decoration over and under it?
@@JesusJusticiadeAmor Thanks for your question.
I must say, I haven't used text styles in this way and this is the first time I've heard this question.
As far as I know, it's called "text styles" because it only encompasses formatting applied to text. It might also apply to glyphs, but I don't think images can be used inside of the text styles tab.
There might be a font which has some kind of decoration above or below which can be used, but images as far as I know cannot be formatted into a text style.
@@RoryMolePublishing I appreciate your response Rory. Yes, they are called text styles after all. I will proceed manually in adding the images to the chapter titles. Thank you for your insight.
Thanks! It is i needed
Thank you very much you are awesome
Thank you, this has been a great help, much better than the tutes on the Serif site.
I'm writing my book in Scrivener, and having to set up chapter titles as Header1 because it doesn't have an option to give it a unique identifier. Unfortunately, exporting as .docx makes no difference in the Flow function of Affinity Publisher. The best it can do is to start the Header 1 title on the next odd page. That's helpful, but I still have to go to each chapter and shift+enter to move the title down the page. I set up a ruler line so I'll know where to align the chapter title. I did have white space above the title in Scrivener, but Publisher deletes the white space when it moves the chapter title to the next odd page.
I imported the .docx file into Pages and there's no function in that to rename the header with a unique identifier either. My book will have about 60 chapters so this is extremely annoying, but I don't see any way around it.
I trialed InDesign and to me it's easier than Affinity. More logical and intutitive. Too expensive, though.
Hi there,
Thanks very much for your comment.
I must say I have never used Scrivener, neither has my wife. We normally use Microsoft Word. In Word we set up very basic text styles with basic names which all get imported into Affinity Publisher. The main thing is to plan your layout settings before hand in both your manuscript and in Affinity.
I used to use Adobe InDesign CS6 for laying out our books, but have since changed over to Affinity a couple of years ago. I also know that Adobe has features that Affinity does not have, but InDesign tends to be quite complicated if you want to use it to it's maximum capability. We decided to simplify things with the book layout settings in Affinity and have managed to publish a couple of books with it.
I hope you will persevere with Affinity Publisher and see what happens.
Kind regards to you.
This was fantastic. Do you have any videos showing what your word doc looks like / how it is set up? That would be helpful for this newbie.
Hi there DJ,
Thanks so much for your comment.
As yet I have no videos showing the compiling of a word document which would be set up as a manuscript to later be imported into Affinity Publisher.
In the past I have had clients who have set their manuscript up with no text style formatting and then others who have. Everyone has their own method of using Microsoft Word.
Because MS Word is a very competent word processor, many people like to use it. Some people have done courses to learn how to use it to its maximum capability and most of us have not.
I do suggest that you take a look at the following websites :-
Book Editing Associates.
www.book-editing.com/format-manuscript-microsoft-word/
Masterclass
www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-format-a-book-manuscript#how-to-create-a-title-page
Hope this helps you.
Kind Regards to you.
Thank you, Rory. Your presentations are very easy to follow and was very helpful. But as footnotes and endnotes are missing from Affinity Plusher, can you let us know how to do it manually? I am struggling to put some footnotes in a manuscript. Thank you!
Hi there Vaandel,
Unfortunately, I don't have any quick way to put footnotes into Affinity Publisher, but you can do it manually by using the "superscript" on a number by going to the character tab and going to Typography. Then use a master page with a pre drawn line and place your footnote in another text frame and make sure you use a list to number the footnotes.
Do the same for ever other footnote in your book taking note of your number sequence. That should produce a satisfactory result.
Regards to you.
Unfortunately, if you have a client's manuscript with many footnotes, you'll have to apply them again in Affinity Publisher manually.
Obrigado pelo seu tempo. Eu pretendo publicar as minhas memórias especialmente do meu tempo de militar (obrigatório) na guerra colonial de Angola nos anos 1971/2/3/4 . quero deixar aos vindouros a minha experiência traumática desses anos. comprei este programa e agora desesperadamente tento entender como desenvolver todo este trabalho. já vi parte das suas explicações, mas o meu tempo de vida é curto, tenho de correr. Po isso um obrigado pela sua paciência. De Portugal um grande Abraço.
I got through part one. I've learned this (mostly), great tutorial. However, what I'm looking for is how to get the content all nice and pretty at the bottom. Did you set baseline grid prior to placing the content? Widows? Orphans? etc? What are those settings that were in your preset "that you used before for a book." Thanks!
Hi there Gary,
Thanks very much for your comment and also your questions.
I usually set up the baseline grid in the text styles section and also widows and orphans too. Obviously you will use the widows and orphans setting in your body text style which is probably where most of your text is. Headings will not need widows and orphans. This is the best way to control how your text lines up at the bottom. You will probably need to play around with both of those settings to see how they work together. Just to say here..... there is no perfect layout of text, but the baseline grid does help a lot to create a balanced alignment of text.
Have a look at this article on the book designer website. I think they are strong proponents of Adobe InDesign, but their articles are worth looking into.
www.thebookdesigner.com/pagination-styles-shall-we-kill-the-widows-orphans/comment-page-1/
Hope you find a solution.
Kind Regards to you.
Thank you very much for your videos, they are very much appreciated. When choosing to write a book from scratch, do you set it to print or print ready?
Hi Leotha,
Just choose the print option instead of press ready. All the settings are set up to print your finished book layout correctly if you followed the settings I had in the tutorial document. The colour space should be CMYK.
The process in the tutorial is for those who will send their book inner with their cover to a professional printing service to print their book.
Hope this info helps you.
Regards to you.
@@RoryMolePublishing thanks you so much for replying!
Hey, Serif! You are _the_ best but we _need_ right-to-left text support now!
This is great. Do you talk in future videos about inserting an image/photo? I wondered if they were in the document from Word if they would come through or better to place separately. thank you
Hi there Thomas,
When inserting a photo or image into your Publisher document, you would first draw out a picture frame on the page in the place you want to place the image using the picture frame tool.
Then from the file menu find the "place" command and click on that. Now you will be prompted to find the relevant image to be placed inside the picture frame you created. Once the image is in the frame you can move it around within the text as you like. You decide where the image must be placed.
Now you wrap text around the image by clicking on the "Show text wrap settings" icon (5th icon from the left at the top of your workspace. Make sure your image frame is selected and then click on the icon. You are now presented with options. Set the space gaps around the image as desired.
Never place images within MS Word and try and have them imported without any glitches. Rather do it after you have brought your text into your document. It's much better than way and you have lots more control of the images inside of Affinity Publisher.
Hope this works for you.
Regards to you.
@@RoryMolePublishing Thank you so much
This is such a great tutorial, thank you. Question, would the same rules apply to a google doc?
Hi there,
I'm not too sure of your question. If you are saying .... can you place a google doc inside of Affinity Publisher? The answer is probably no. It needs to be a Microsoft Office document.
If your question is something else like laying out a book inside of google docs, I have no clue about that.
@@RoryMolePublishing thank you very much. That does help 😆
very*2 nice!!
Thank you very much indeed for this step-by-step directions. One thing you have not talked about was the inserting of images/ pics. It would be kind of you if you explain that. Regards, Nate
Hi there Nate,
Thanks for your comment.
The purpose of this tutorial is how to layout a book like a novel or something similar, without images.
There are very good tutorials created by Affinity people explaining how to place images and everything associated with that here on CZcams.
Here is the link:-
czcams.com/channels/nw-cXN3oqAg7YXZVMKN0dA.html
Hope this helps you.
Regards
@@RoryMolePublishing How nice and kind of you to respond promptly.
Thanks a million Rory!
Have a wonderful day Sir!
Nate
@@freshface6454 You are welcome.
Thank you Rory for the explanation of how to use Affinity Publisher to format a book. I am however running into some issues when trying to upload a PDF file into KDP. When I export the file as a PDF and upload it into KDP my words are running off the pages. Even if I go back and adjust the size of my project in Affinity it does not fix the problem. Does anyone have any tips on how to fix this?
Hi there Jayley,
I'm glad that you have received some help from my videos, thanks very much for the feedback.
Unfortunately I don't know much about uploading of pdf files to KDP. Could they not help you or suggest what could be the problem so that it can be fixed?
I hope you get your problem sorted out.
I wish you all the best with your projects.
Kind Regards to you......
Hello, Thank you for all your help. How can you add image captions such as: Figure 1.1. Figure 2.1., Figure 3.1 with a format Figure A.B where A is the chapter and B is the image number for a book with chapters?
Hi there Erci,
Thanks very much for your comment.
I am not too sure about your question. Have you seen this in any other book that you could perhaps refer me to so that I can see what it actually looks like. As yet I have not needed this in any of our publications.
If you figure out how to add captions, would you let me know? The only way I've found instructions for is to make a picture box and use the artistic text tool, but I can't figure out how to accomplish that. I added the caption to some of my photos and just placed the photos in the text with the captions already there, but, obviously, you can have uniform caption size when you do that. Good luck. I'll post if I figure it out. As I'm sure you've discovered you can't add text boxes for caption purposes.
Q: Can one import a PDF and then tweak it in affinity publisher?
I have owned infinity publisher since if first came out. I have never used it. I’m looking for a tutorial for setting up a photo-book inside of Infinity publisher . I use Blurb on demand publishing. If there is another person you know who uses infinity to design photo books this would be great.
Hi there Edward,
Thank you for commenting on my video tutorial.
As yet I do not know of anyone who designs photo books with Affinity Publisher, but there probably are people out there who have done so in the past and are willing to share their knowledge.
In my opinion I think that it would be worth your while if you visited the Affinity Publisher channel here on CZcams. They have all sorts of tutorials available for you to look at and many involve publications with images. It should not be too difficult to figure out how to compile your photo book. I also suggest that you visit the following website called "Milk Books". This would be for the purpose of getting some ideas and inspiration from what other people have done and using it for your own publication. Here is the address :- www.milkbooks.com/blog/inspiration/16-inspiring-photo-book-ideas/?AU+-+DSA+Campaign&hsa_mt=&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&hsa_kw=&hsa_acc=2057420820&hsa_grp=151947857510&hsa_tgt=dsa-19959388920&hsa_src=g&hsa_ad=655012605832&hsa_cam=19977483488&gad=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwr82iBhCuARIsAO0EAZwTxT14A8UbyxZbYtqtKlxv5H1vHWA4aCVYR9AarX0Sk2M8tMEba7oaAopHEALw_wcB
Together with learning some Affinity Publisher skills and getting inspired you should be able to compile a really nice photo book.
I hope this helps you in some way.
Regards to you.
Thanks for your tutorial. When I placed my text from WORD, the text frames for each side are moved .15 inch toward the center of the book on every page instead of within the predefined margins. My inner margin is .75 in yet the frames are inserting at .6 while outer margin is supposed to be .6 Do you know why this is happening or how I can select all the even / odd pages and reposition them correctly without having to fix every single page manually?
Hi there Jon,
Thanks for your question.
Only have one document in your new document setup section instead of multiple documents with text frames in them. Then in the one document where you want to place your text, draw out the text frame according to your margins all around. The go to the "place" command and select your MS Word file that you want to bring in and place the text. Now the first frame will be placed along with any text styles you have in the Word file. There will be the little red triangle on the text frame indicating that there is more text to follow on more pages. Don't create any pages to flow text to, just hold down the shift key and then click on the red triangle on the text frame and the text will flow out to automatically created pages which Affinity Publisher will do for you. Now all your text is flowed out on those pages correctly.
Hopefully this will help.
Give it a try.
Regards to you......
@@RoryMolePublishing Hi, thanks for replying. I did place the text as one document as you described. I think the problem might be when I try to add a single page somewhere to get the front matter sections on the proper pages, it messes up the margins for some reason. I Did manage to get that straightened out though. But not without spending a lot of time fighting with it. Even trying to remove empty pages the program added was a hassle.
I could not delete single pages, or spreads. And it would automatically add an entirely blank spread between sections at times. Could never figure out why, though I did manage to finally fix it though. I had new sections starting on a new even page, so I expected at least one blank page to be added at times, but not 3 blank pages that I couldnt remove.
Now I've gotta try to recreate my index that I had set up in WORD. Do you know if affinity will recognize the index tags i set? or if there is a way to customize the order to Bible book order? in word you could assign an unseen tag to give books a number so it would be BBCCVV book-chapter-verse, but I don't see similar options in affinity yet.
Well done.
Thanks!
I would be willing to pay someone a few bucks to create a 6 x 9 trade book template that I could throw my text and pics into. Are there any third-party template creators?
Ay, yi, yi! Sheesh!
im not sure i understand how you set it up for a Printed book...as the pages do not go from 1 to 2....... the left side would be the first page and on the other side it would be the last page? example A4 HORISONAL MAKE 2 A5 PAGES.. Page 1 and page 140 for example.
the next A4 would have 4 pages on it when you print it, back and front, odd and even... so it would be the same but double sided printing. How do you set that up? How do i get the page number in the right order for that.
Hi there Crabby Paddy,
I think you are referring to setting up your page numbering in Affinity Publisher to correspond with a desktop printer of some sorts?
To me this can be worked out. I remember when using Microsoft Publisher and printing in "Booklet" orientation, that the printer I used in those days was able to pint on A4 which would be folded in half into and A5 size with the right sequence of pages on either side and then stapled in the middle. This was printer specific from within the printer software dialogues.
To be honest with you, I have no idea about how to set up Affinity Publisher to print on a desktop printer.
This tutorial has been the setup I have used to have books my wife and I have published and also that which I have done for clients. The completed layout of pages flowing as is shown in the tutorial and then exported as a PDF document and then sent to a Professional Printing company. I suspect that they have software that integrates the PDF document into their system and it prints out on probably A3 or A2 paper and then it gets cut to size and then bound (glued) into perfect binding in a cover as a book.
Sorry I can't answer your question and give you some method here, but don't you think that perhaps if you are printing on your own printer, there should be some kind of documentation that will explain how the sequence of page numbering works?
Perhaps you could go to the Affinity Forum pages and ask this question there.
I hope you succeed in accomplishing your goal.
Kind regards to you,
Rory
I have a question on how to do something in Affinity Publisher. I’m trying to turn a whole book into grayscale. I uploaded the PDF, which is in color, but I can’t find a way to convert it to grayscale. I tried to use a Black & White adjustment layer, but that totally eliminates the middle values, which are supposed to be turned into gray tones. I also tried the HSL adjustment, which seems to work better. However, if I were to apply an adjustment to one page spread in the book, it doesn’t get applied to any of the other pages in the book, which means that I’d have to change the pages one by one if I want to apply a grayscale effect to all of them. Even if I use Master Pages, they wouldn’t apply a grayscale effect to the whole book. They would only apply the effect to the elements that are included in the Master Pages. Any other elements from the book don’t get affected by a filter, particularly if that adjustment filter is applied through a Master Page. So, my point is that I’m trying to turn all of the pages in my book from color to grayscale. Is there a quick & easy way to do this in Affinity Publisher?
Thank you 🙏🏻
Hi there chariots8x,
I must say that your question has left me stumped.
I'll have a look into Affinity Publisher and see if there is a quick way to do what you are asking.
Thanks for your question.
Kind Regards to you.
Hi again chariots8x,
I've done some research and this is what I can tell you concerning your question about converting your documents into grayscale.
You will need to purchase an extra piece of software called, PDF Genius. This little program has the capability of converting all your documents to black and white (grayscale).
All you need to do is export your document from Affinity Publisher to your hard drive. Then open it in PDF Genius. Once your document is open, you will need to select all the pages. Then you go to the convert tab at the top and you'll then get options to convert to jpeg, etc. Towards the bottom of the dialogue box you'll see an option called Colour Model. There are 3 options inside the dropdown arrow, "RGB", "CMYK", "Grayscale". You'll then select Grayscale and then select convert at the bottom.
It will then convert your whole document, page for page into grayscale.
It will also save the document into another folder of your choice on your hard drive.
That is the best solution I have found so far and I think it is worth it.
I purchase PDF Genius some years ago on the Apple APP Store and it has served me well for years. I must say, I have never needed to convert documents from colour to grayscale before. This is worth knowing about for the future if I will ever need to have this option.
I saw that PDF Genius is also available for Windows as well.
Here is the link.
apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/pdfgenius/9NBLGGH528TV?hl=en-us&gl=US
Hope this helps.
Regards to you.
Hello Rory. Thank you for the video. How do you solve conversion from Affinity to ePub?
Hi there,
Thanks very much for your comment. It's much appreciated.
In terms of coversion to EPub......
Because I am using an Apple Macbook Pro I have some options to create EPub books. Apple Pages comes installed on Macs and it is very capable of building an EPub book. It even has some templates. In my opinion conversion to Epub is not the best way to go so that your text and layout is how you want it to be. Usually Epub books are flowable and people want that option when they read a book on their particular device the way they want it to be either with enlarged text or smaller text. This is why I think it is best to build the book in capable software as simply as possible. Conversions often don't work to well. Affinity Publisher is built for print publications instead. Hopefully Affinity will add that functionality to Publisher in the future.
Hope this info helps you if you have a Mac. If not then there is Scriviner which has that capability to export to EPubs.
@@RoryMolePublishing I have invested some money to support this company. I have bought 1 and 2 versions whole set, even if I don't use it. I still prefer InDesign and Quark. But I believe they will do it. At least if it was already implemented in Serif PagePlus I don't see a problem with giving such functionality in the new/updated tool. Affinity demonstrates good progress. Competition between software companies is always good for a customer. Thank you for your response.
Hi, I am having a problem, as I cannot auto flow to the margins I have already created. When autoflowing, the generated text boxes are some other size which is different to the margins which are also set up on the master page. Any ideas of what i could do? thanks :)
Hi there Daniela,
Make sure that you set up your master pages first before auto flowing text to your normal pages. Affinity Publisher allocates Master A as the default master. You can change it after you flow your text.
It would be helpful if you could take some screen shots of what your problems are and either send me a private message to a link where your images are or if you could send me a sample part of your book with a portion of your text in an MS Word document so that I can experiment with it.
If this is possible then you could email me at rorymole@gmail.com
@@RoryMolePublishing I set up the master pages and margins as soon as I opened the doc. I just realised that the problem was that I was not holding the shift key until the text is flowed. If you press the red "dumbell" on the text box and press and release the shift key, the text autoflows but the text boxes open at a random size not the size of the pre defined margins. Thanks :)
I was looking forward to watch your tutorial, however I dropped right after you stated you wrote the book using Microsoft Word.
Using multiple applications to achieve a single output does not tally with me.
It would be great if you would make an additional video using only Publisher from the beginning. I am aware there are some drawbacks in using Publisher. For example, Microsoft now integrates OpenAI ChatGPT, and you can use it to rewrite portions of your text. Microsoft Word also integrates strong spelling, dictionaries and thesauruses. Which I am not certain Publisher does.
Now, Word misses some of the publishing features you find in Publisher. But I was interested to find out how easy/difficult to write a low contents, short story, in Affinity Publisher.
Hi there Pisk Six,
Thanks for your comment.
Just to say.... I created this tutorial for those who have either themselves have written a book in MS Word or those who have clients who have written their books in Word.
I have clients who write their books in MS Word and give me their manuscripts to lay out their books in Affinity Publisher. APublisher is a layout application for publications which will be printed either on their own printers or through a professional printing company. Affinity Publisher was not created to actually write a book in, although I suppose people could do so if they wish. The thing is that many people who write books are not interested in learning how to lay out the book for print. They just want someone else to take care of that part of the process. Then there is the design of the book cover as well. Affinity Publisher does a fantastic job of laying out the text part and the cover. Authors usually don't want to take the time to learn how to do the layout part, they just want to write their books.
So..... to answer you question whether Affinity Publisher can be used to write a short, low content story..... Yes it is capable of doing this.
Hope this explanation will help.
Kind Regards to you.
My page size is 4 in by 6 inch.facing pages starting on right. I have flowed in my material. I usually try and create a booklet and self-publish not trying to make millions on amazon or anything like that, Just self print these for local consumption. Anyway when I go to print and create booklet it goes for a scosh and then I get a Print workflow error and stop. Any ideas?
Reply
Hi there,
Thanks very much for your question.
Unfortunately I have not printed books on a printer which people use either at home or at work. I use a professional printing company who compiles many books every day for their clients. So I cannot help you with this one.
Perhaps if you do a search through the Affinity forums someone might have a solution for you.
Hope you have success.
Regards to you.
I noticed a double s mark when I create a text frame for my master page on the top margin as I begin the process. It never appeared before. It's a mystery to me. Thanks
Hi Danny,
There might be a setting that you have accidentally switched on somehow.
It would be helpful to see what your problem looks like.
Hello Rory, fantastic tutorials, I'm really enjoying working along with you on them (I'm learning a lot) but I've hit a snag, there's no download link for the 'Alice In Wonderland' word doc for me to work with? Would it be possible for you to provide one? Thanks, Rory. Rory, you should turn this book tutorial into a course for Udemy , I'm sure a wider audience would love it
Hi there Claran,
Here is a link to my dropbox where the .docx file is.
You will still need to format it with basic formatting within MS Word or a similar program.
www.dropbox.com/sh/0n87thaag8tnbu6/AAC7pt6zDX3UP5w38-Tt4M7ka?dl=0
@@RoryMolePublishing Rory, thanks for the speed of your reply and thank you again for providing a link to the Word doc, much appreciated sir
how do you add an image to the document...after inserting text before creating sections?
Hi there,
Thanks very much for your comment.
When adding images after you have added your text I would suggest first insert a picture frame with no fill or stroke properites. You will be able to resize it to whatever size you like in your document. Then insert your image into the picture frame. Once you've done that then play around with the text wrap settings. You'll find the 3 text wrap icons at the top of your Interface. They are the 3rd group of 3 along the top from the left.
That is the easiest way to add an image to your document.
You might be able to find a more detailed tutorial here on CZcams which should explain a bit more to you.
I hope you have success in your projects.
Kind Regards to you.....
Thank you!
Rory, I followed your instructions and imported a word file. The text flowed in fine, but I lost all the footnotes. My text had an index. The index was imported but it did not corelate properly. Is there a way of doing it?
Hi there Dr Kuldip,
The only problem at the moment with Affinity Publisher is that it does not support footnotes and endnotes. There has been much talk on the Affinity Publisher forums where people have been requesting this capability to be added to APublisher for quite some time now and we just don't know when the developers are going to add it on.
I still have Adobe InDesign CS6 which I have kept because of this issue. If I have a project or a client who needs to have footnotes and endnotes imported with a MS Word file, InDesign is very capable of doing this. That is the only way that footnotes and endnotes can be handled automatically.
If this is going to be a huge issue for you, I would suggest that perhaps you try and purchase Adobe InDesign CS6 from an online reseller if you don't already have it or an earlier version. At one stage Adobe had their entire CS3 range of software available for download. This might also be a possibility for you to look into.
Apart from that I don't know what else you should try.
I hope you will find a solution to this problem.
Stay well.
Regards,
Rory
@@RoryMolePublishing thanks for taking the time to reply. Does Indesign also maintain the index created in word.
@@kuldipdhiman
As far as I know, InDesign is capable of importing your index, but I have read on an Adobe InDesign support forum that some uses have had issues in the past. So, from what I can see it is more than likely that InDesign will work for you, but there is a learning curve.
I suggest that you search for some CZcams video tutorials that deal with importing MS Word files complete with footnotes, endnotes and an index and see what people are suggesting there. Then if you have InDesign, give it a go.
That's all I can suggest at this time.
Hope it all woks out for you.
Here is a link to an article about some problems to do with importing of index from ms word and how the user solved the issue they had.
www.bookdesignmadesimple.com/error-importing-word-index-indesign/
Kind Regards.....
@@RoryMolePublishing thanks. Would you advice that I typed my new book directly on Affinity Publisher. Can I insert footnotes and index in Affinity?
@@kuldipdhiman As I said before, Affinity Publisher does not support footnotes or endnotes, unfortunately.
If you have a look on the Affinity forums there might be a way that you can do this manually, but I have not done this in the past.
How do you insert a blank page on the left side? I have several part introductions that need a blank page before them.
Hi Danny,
I think the answer to your question is most probably that you should set up your document from the start, so that your chapters start on the left instead of on the right. This will enable you to put your introductions on the left side and then whatever you want to have on the right can be placed there. This I think is the most logical way to achieve what you want.
There are many books that start this way.
Unfortunately if your book is already laid out then switching to left hand orientation will be quite a challenge and most probably will result in a more significant amount of work.
Hope this answer helps you.
Regards to you.
Thanks for your reply. What I have is a book that has four parts. Each with it's own title. The part page is on the odd numbered page, but I need a blank page on the even page just before it. I was able to manipulate 3 of the Part pages to have a blank page preceding it, but I think that was a matter of lucky formatting. The fourth part is more difficult because it naturally falls on the even numbered page. It won't let me insert a blank page and then have it push the part page over to the odd numbered page, along with the rest of the story. How would I go about setting up my document to have the blank pages on the specified even numbered pages? I can't visualize the process. Thanks for your help.
@@dannyduggan1348
Hi there Danny,
Would it be possible for you to email me your Affinity Publisher document.
I can have a good look at it to see exactly what you are wanting to do.
You can email me at:-
rorymole@gmail.com
At what point do you insert images in your manuscript?
Hi there Jessie,
Thank you for your comment.
If I understand your question correctly, I don't insert images into a manuscript, only in the layout document inside Affinity Publisher. The books I have laid out mostly have no images, but some have only a couple and they are inserted into the appropriate pages as the author has instructed me.
I think if the author wants images to be inserted in their document then they send them through separately and in their manuscript which is usually written in Microsoft Word, they will use empty boxes or text frames to indicate where the images should go.
I hope this helps you.
Hello Rory, I tried to use the "Place" option but can get any access to the .doc documents. Is there any good reason for that ?
Hi there Eric,
I suggest the following.
Make sure you create your manuscript within MS Word or if you are on a Mac, create your manuscript in Apple Pages and export it out as a .docx document.
Save your document as a .docx document. Affinity Publisher does not import a word document created in a version of MS Word that does not support the new .docx format. .doc will not be able to be imported.
If you are struggling with saving your document to the .docx format then I suggest the following.
If you do not already have a Microsoft online account, go to their website and create one. Then import your .doc word document onto your online profile. Then open the document online within the MS Word online interface. Then save the document as a .docx document and then download it to your hard drive.
You will now be able to "place" the document into Affinity Publisher.
Hope this info helps you.
Regards to you.
@@RoryMolePublishing Thanks a lot Rory
Using Version 2.4 - the Table of Contents function crashes the programme without fail. This makes the book tools unusable for production!
Hi there David,
Thank you for leaving your comment.
I have installed AP version 2.4 when the update came out. I've also compiled a table of contents for a recent book I was working on and it all works really well on my side.
I have Affinity installed on my Macbook Pro with OS Catalina.
I am not sure if you are on a Mac or Windows and what system updates you may or may not have installed. In times like these I would be checking out the Affinity forum for anything that might be related to the issues that I'm having. Then I'd post up my problem there if it has not been dealt with in an earlier post. Then, see what answers or suggestions you get.
I hope it all works out for you.
Regards to you.
Unfortunately, when I press the triangle, it doesn't spread out the rest of the text :/ sigh...
Hi there ADK,
You should not have any problems populating text if you hold down the shift key and click on that little triangle on the text frame.
I suggest that you have get a hold of a Word document with the .docx suffix not .doc, and use the "place" command which will bring the text in from that word document as well as the text styles contained in the Word document. It should work.
If not, then there is something wrong which should be further investigated. Perhaps you could contact Affinity-Serif and ask them for help.
I wish you all the best with your documents.
Regards to you.
the styles are not importing from my word document
you know why?
Hi there,
Firstly, what operating system are you using? APublisher should be the same more or less on both windows and Mac with a few differences in keyboard fuctionality.
Make sure your MS Word document is saved as a .docx format, not .doc. Affinity Publisher will only import .docx.
Secondly, you need to make sure that you have minimal text styles inside MS Word. Also you need to remove all suggested styles within APublisher as I have described in my tutorial at the beginning.
Then once you are ready to import the MS Word document, go to the "Place" command under the file menu and bring the text in.
It should bring along all the text styles from your MS Word document.
If this still happens then you might have some other issues on your computer.
Hope this helps.
Regards to you.
@@RoryMolePublishing thanks for you answer !, tomorrow i will try and will tell you.
but i believe that i imported the document in doc format, perhaps text styles didn't import to affinity
so a bit uncertain how to prepare my word doc to "place" in the template....I don't see heading one or ...after placing in the template in publisher...
Hi there Teri,
Thank you for your question.
Here are a few things you can do to make life easier when bringing your content (text) into your Affinity Publisher document.
1. There are a number of ways of bringing text in. If you want more control of the process, I suggest you have your MS Word document open in MS Word as a guide. You can copy and paste text across. In this way you will avoid bringing in MS Word's text styles. I have found in the past that importing a Word document brings in too many extra text styles which I have to clean up anyway. Unfortunately this is part of the process of laying out books from MS Word documents. I have a client who has written 4 books all of which have many footnotes, up to about 300 in some of his books. When importing the Word document into Affinity using the "Place" command, I have found many text styles have come along with the import which originated from him copy and pasting articles into his document. Instead of cleaning up his MS Word document, he has left it as is which creates so much hassle for me. Sometimes copy and pasting is the best way to avoid the importing of all that extra junk.
2. If you are going to use the "Place" command to bring in your text from MS Word, please make sure you have only a few text styles applied to your manuscript. Also name then in MS Word with the same names you would use in Affinity Publisher. A good knowledge of how to use text styles is a good skill to have. Many people us MS Word without knowing how to use text styles. For instance, you can set up spacing in Word in a similar way as in Affinity Publisher and apply it to your paragraphs. Upon import those text styles come across. Often I have to just edit the text style after imported within Affinity Publisher to get it right. This is all part of the process of laying out books in programs such as Affinity and even Adobe InDesign.
I hope this advice helps you.
I wish you all the best with your projects.
Kind Regards to you.
I am going to watch your part 1 a few more times..I misunderstood...I thought you wanted to bring in some style...I am not sure how to add style to the placed document...this is what I will concentrate on now.... thank you for your support.@@RoryMolePublishing
I have text styles window open but do not see text style edit window??
never mind I found edit window...new question....as I am applying header styles to my chapter and title...I find I am losing pages at the end of my document....what am I doing ? and how can I recover those?
never mind I figured out how to add pages at the end it worked...
You selected one page, but it looks like lit's two pages. Is it really two pages left and right?
Hi there Yaj,
I am not sure where in the video you are referring your question to about me selecting two pages or one. I would be helpful if you could tell me the at what point you saw the selection happen.
Check the time (how many minutes and seconds into the video).
Thanks.
@@RoryMolePublishing I just watched it again and you did go to one page. I hadn't noticed you were working on the Master which had the left and right. I confused myself :) Thank you for making this demo. You are so helpful
but you can't make ebook version from affinity designer.
Hi there Noor,
This tutorial is for Affinity Publisher and not Designer.
For now, Affinity Publisher cannot export to Ebook only to PDF. You can export a book to PDF and then find a converter to convert the PDF to EPub or any of the other formats for Ebooks.
@@RoryMolePublishing Thanks, sir I would appreciate that if you would make tutorial videos about converting PDF to EPUB FORMAT for ebooks. I have learned much from your tutorials greeting from Pakistan.
It's still alt for copying on windows
Thanks for sharing that Jessica.
Regards to you.
Absolutely! Your videos are the best I've found. Thank you!
I can't seem to insert my document. I've tried both pdf and docx formats
@@jbeck1234 You shouldn't have any problem "placing" your document into a text frame and then populating the rest of your .docx file. Remember you should use minimal text styles within Microsoft Word before importing.
What I usually do is I split up a Word Document which is the manuscript into smaller chapter files and then import each on. I know this might seem like a longer way around, but it is much easier to handle.
If the book you are importing through the "place" command is a simply formatted one, then even if you import a full manuscript it should work just fine. Beware though that you need to have only the text styles you created yourself in MS Word present in the manuscript. This is so important because MS Word gives suggestions. I also found if I am busy with a manuscript and I copy and past text from my internet browser, that just by copy and pasting text some other styles get added into MS Word. You can check this out. So I suggest before you import, that you delete styles not in use from within MS Word.
When importing your MS Word document, use the "place" command under the "File" menu. This is the way it's done.
Hope you have success with your publishing projects.
Regards to you.
Rory
This seems like an excessive amount of work. What is the point of Affinity Publisher having a setting for orphan lines, then you have to adjust them anyway? What’s the point of adding headers in MS Word if you have to manually add sections? What if you were laying out a 500 page book?
Hi there Bernard,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts here.
The thing about publishing books is all about how it is laid out as I am sure you know. The whole thing about book design has been around since books have been here. The whole widow and orphan problem is actually debatable. Have a look at this article on the Book Designer Website.
www.thebookdesigner.com/pagination-styles-shall-we-kill-the-widows-orphans/?channel=Organic&medium=Google%20-%20Search
The thing about using MS Word is that many authors write their books in Word and that is how I receive their manuscripts. They pay me to lay out their book even though many of them don't really know how to work with MS Word. The problems I've encountered with authors manuscripts would be quite interesting to talk about in a video at a later stage, perhaps. The thing is that Word poses huge problems when it's imported into a layout program. Affinity Publisher has to look through the document and import it as best as it can.
Let me give you an example.....
I helped one of my clients with MS Word and text styles and so forth. I asked him to have minimal styles in his document. As he wrote his manuscript he was quoting from other author's books. He also copied and pasted things he had found on the internet as well. As he compiled his manuscript he also gave reference to the quotes through footnotes as well. As he copied across articles, formatting also came over as well into his MS Word document. When he gave me his manuscript there was a huge amount of extra formatting which came as text was copied by him in his document. I had to wade through all of that just to simplify things and clean up his manuscript.
So.... book designers and layout artists will have to bite the bullet when it comes to importing an author's manuscript.
Regards to you.
Thanks for the reply. I can’t argue with Word causing issues, the messed up song or lyric could easily be due to goofy formatting from Word.
But the widows and orphans issue seems like a bug in Publisher. If you tell the program “no widows” and “no orphans”, then it’s reasonable to expect that there would be no widows and no orphans. The software should help with your work, not give you more work.
Thanks for your videos.
I'm an absolute beginner, this video does not help. I can't see what you did on Word, I don't know what you mean about setting up in Word like what did you do? I don't know how you got all those pages in a row on Affinity pub. What buttons did you press? This video jumps way ahead. Iam non the wiser sorry. Any chance you can do another video for someone who has zero experience in this please? And explain every single tiny step??? 😕😕😭😭😱
Hi there Cutie,
Thank you for your comment.
I am sorry that you have not been able to follow along with my video tutorial. From what you have shared you are "an absolute beginner".
My suggestion is that you learn the Affinity Publisher interface, menus and other areas of the program first before taking on a project to lay out a book.
This tutorial is about how to lay out a book for print.
This is for people who what to transfer their manuscript from Microsoft Word into Affinity Publisher and send it to a professional printer to print their book out.
Perhaps you could consider doing other tutorials here on CZcams which are more for beginner level until you understand how Affinity Publisher works.
Sorry that it didn't work out for you.
Hope you are able to learn the program.
Kind regards to you .....
🤒
You say that the tutorial is from beginning to end yet you start from an explained point. How did you get to the starting point of your tutorial? You are assuming knowledge that people may not have.
Hi, could you please do a vid on a two-column textbook? Thank you!
It didnt' work well.... :/
Hi there,
Thanks very much for your reply.
As yet I have not embarked on a project for a text book that has two columns. I don't have any for the near future, but you never know.
I hope you find the answers you are looking for.
Kind regards to you.
Thank you! I figured it out, just need to see what happens when images come in w the word file… if they need text boxes, etc. if you have any vids like that, do tell! Thanks again!
Lizzi