From there I can insert front matter pages and add a bunch of normal pages after.

I like to create a Front Matter Master too. Since you selected Spreads, you’ll have a Normal Right and Normal Left Master to begin with. You’ll also be able to create sections in the same way you would in MS Word. Just like other desktop publishing apps, you’ll have the option to build Master Pages to assign different profiles to sections in your book. If you don’t select this, importing your contents will be a pain.

This will build a text frame into every page. Last one, and this is possibly the most important check the box Automatic Text Frames. Be sure to use the finish size here and select the Bleeds tab to include bleeds. Scribus includes some preset page sizes, but you can always customize.

Add a larger Inside margin to create a gutter.

It’s easy and once you’ve got the pages the way you like, you can always save them as a template to use later. I advice setting up your own pages though. You’ve got a lot of options here, including using some existing templates. Once you’ve toured the menus a bit, open a new document and you’ll be able to preset several elements. But the Outline, Layers, Styles, and Properties windows are all commonly used for styling your pages. You won’t need all of these all the time. You’ve got some controls on the top bar, but many of the functions you need live under the Windows menu. Unlike Adobe InDesign or Affinity Publisher, you must open a lot of the toolbars in new windows. Making A Bookīefore you create your book, you’ll want to adjust some settings and get familiar with the layout. The downside is that you’re limited to the wiki page for how-to information and the interface is more cumbersome to navigate. So what you have is desktop publishing software that will do everything InDesign can (for a book) without having to pay anything. While the team that built Scribus strives for a user-friendly interface, it’s not perfect. Updates might take a long time to come out, and functionality might not be the best.

That means it’s free but with that comes the caveat that those maintaining it are not getting paid. It’s a simple page layout tool built for all common operating systems and totally open source. Today we will look at creating a simple novel in Scribus and comparing it to other popular options. If you’ve never tried, or even heard of, Scribus then you are in the right place.

Thinking about laying out your next book yourself but not sure you want to invest in InDesign or another paid tool? Try Scribus-it’s an open source alternative for page layout.

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