So what makes Affinity a different desktop publishing app? Getting to Know Affinity Publisher You’ll still be using Master Pages, adding text blocks, working with page spreads, and layering content on the page.

If you’re interested in learning how to use desktop publishing software, I encourage you to check out our series on using InDesign to layout your book. And all three Affinity products are actively supported, so updates appear regularly to fix bugs and improve functionality. The software worked great for me while laying out a couple of book interiors (and one truly horrible cover design).

They’ve got a great series of tutorials and an active Forum with users supporting each other. So I will not try to provide a deep dive into how to use Affinity Publisher. For any author who doesn’t want to pay an annual fee for InDesign just so you can lay out one or two books a year, Publisher is a great alternative. What really makes this software shine is how closely it matches InDesign’s functionality at a fraction of the cost. The same file is saved across all three tools!īut that’s possibly more than most authors would use Affinity Publisher for. You can layout a page in Publisher, then switch to Photo to touch up an image, then over to Designer to fix a chart.

For users who own all three, they also make it easy to swap between programs. Publisher focuses on offering a streamlined publishing experience. Affinity Publisher is the third program they’ve created, with Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer released in 20.

Affinity designer alternative