I am using the FIRST affinity publisher and not the new one. It is a matter of principle with me. They promoted they were the fight against Adobe and how they have become so greedy wanting you to rent the program and not buy it. So the makers of Affinity came along and said, Hey, we are going to make it so you only have to buy it and not rent it. This is all fine and dandy. They they have the updated versions. Then suddenly, they don't have any more updates, they just come out with another version.
Nope, I shall stick to the old one which I am still figuring out and frankly, there isn't a program out there that doesn't glitch! Just make something into a PDF and see! So, I have learned to keep notes. I set up a series of books I keep all my metadata in (they are in my low content section on this website...I am old school, I want a hard copy!). These help me to keep the sizes of the books the same, margins the same (unless I decide to change them for some reason, and so on. It makes like so much easier. I also do NOT make the book until I have done almost all my proofing and editing in Open Office. The less changes I have to make in Affinity Publisher the better. Partly because I made the mistake of using a Canadian dictionary in my first book and it just came up as error everywhere no matter how I changed the preferences in sooo many places on Affinity Publisher! So I do it elsewhere and then disable it in the flight preview section. It is just easier. I use UK English for the most part because it is almost the same as Canadian Grammar but of course, the book still gets words highlighted in US grammar! I ignore it now for the most part and at least I get no yellow or green dots coming up saying there is a spelling issue. To do this, I customized the preflight messages. Now setting up the book can be tricky. Make sure you put in bleeds and click it when you make the PDF. Also make sure you have the book size where you want it. If you have to change it, I recommend doing the book again. Trying to deal with all the sizing of text boxes, which I have found no way in that program to do as a group, is a pain! I could put the text box in the master pages but I find it screws up the chapter beginning pages. I just can't get it to go quite right. After you have your bleed and margins in, then click and make the book show in facing pages and edit the masters again. I find when I don't they save funny and can get crazy. I just find it easier for me. Who knows for you made you can set it up as facing pages and it doesn't glitch when you make it single pages to make the PDF to upload. I found it sent the pages all over the places and I have just too many exceptions with images, etc. If it works for you to set it up as in Facing Pages to start then go for it! Whatever works! I put all the pages from the masters as even or odd and do not put in the beginning chapter page until the very end. Every time you add pages especially when you ware working on the book in "facing pages" it will only add pages from one side so you have to right click and then hit "apply master to all pages" and select the one you want. This will sort the blank pages out but unless you want to exclude you will also be you might as well just do the chapter pages last mind you: ALWAYS MOVE THE TEXT USING THE ENTER BUTTON DOWN TO THE PLACE YOU WANT THE BEGINNING OF EACH CHAPTER TO START before moving on to the next chapter, otherwise you will have text possibly needing to link again and it screws things up. And trust me, making the text box in one place will also lead to more issues. Just enter until it is where it is you want it on the page. The other thing I do is I like chapters. They may go in one at a time however it is important to link them when you add so edits and inserts flow or you may find the end of chapter 13 down at the end of the book! A real drag! And remember. to post text and have it flow to the next page, just hold shift key and hit the little red triangle in the flow text on the side of the text box. Took me four videos on You Tube to find that little tidbit! Crazy! It is so important, but no one else seemed to think it was! Then your text will flow to the next page! Also, because so many computers are not that great at managing a book formatting program, I don't link the chapter until after I have checked to make sure nothing glitched when I added it. Sometimes the writing program will do something funky in Affinity Publisher and make it not stay true to the formatting you have checked. You also may want to check to make sure the hyphenation is checked so there are no unsightly holes when you do the both side justification. And don't forget your widows and orphans! So just make sure you are in your text tool, and click on the chapter you just put in. Select all or control "A" and highlight everything. Check your font, the size and all other formatting. I do this usually before I flow it to the other pages. Then you can link it to the previous and carry on. So make your really big decisions before you start the book process and have almost all your proofing and editing done. It will really help. My first book took me forever partly because it was always crashing. I should have not done the edits in the program. Life would have been so much easier! This next murder mystery took a 16th of the time to make and I don't know about you, but I want to spend more time writing and less time formatting. Next time we shall talk about the back blurb. Oh isn't that a challenge! Happy writing!
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June 2024
AuthorArtist, Buddhist, Educator, Traveller, Cabinet Maker, kayaker, etc and now writer! |