Can Publisher handle a novel?

[Marian]

I have Publisher 2000 SR-1, but could purchase Publisher 2007 if I have to,
to do my novels.

I plan to self-publish 3-5 novels using the Catalog template which works
great. Each novel has several photos or images.

My first novel has over 40,000 words so far, and will probably have
50-70,000 words. I have it all in MS Word 2007 and am copying it into
Publisher for the format and finished page size (5.5"-8"). Questions are:
1. Does either or both versions of Publisher have enough memory to hold
this much?
2. Should I put a whole novel into one file, or make several smaller files
for each novel?
3. If I need to make smaller files, how many pages can I use at one time
without overburdening memory?

 

[Mary Sauer]

Hypothetically a Publisher file can be 2GB. Publisher 2000 creates large files
as it does not use compression.

Long documents are best done in Word, you don't have to contend with text boxes.

The ideal way of getting your story into Publisher would be to setup the page as
a booklet (special fold), create a text box on the page you want your story to
start, right-click the text box, click change text, click text file, browse to
the Word document. Publisher will automatically create pages and text boxes.

 

[Marian]

Thanks, Mary, so much for your good reply. I have two more questions. I am
using Publisher 2000 in the Catalog special fold. That's landscape, folded
in half to make 5.5" x 8" pages. Will Word 2007 do that? I think Publisher
is skipping some pages. For some reason, sequential pages are blank. I
don't mean pages I am deliberately leaving blank -- like, I pasted a long
poem into p. 14, and it went pp. 14, 15, 18, 19, and 20. It skipped pp. 16
and 17. Also, I agree that using text boxes is tedious and slow. But it's
great when it works, because of text flow.

 

[Mary Sauer]

I have no idea why pages 16 and 17 were skipped. It very well could be you are
using a template instead of starting from scratch with a booklet. Some templates
can be problematic.
Word 2007 has a book fold option, how well it works is unknown to me. You could
ask on a Word forum.