P: Ability to create custom book templates/sizes from scratch

I have completely given up on this. I put a lot of effort trying to find a workable solution.

As bad as the book module is ... a promise to deliver a workable alternative ....... and NOT deliver .....is in-excusable.

I give up.

I fully agree!
This is one of the things that decrease my confidence in Adobe (BTW, how they communicated their change in FLASH strategy is another such thing)

When LR 4 was released we were told we would be able to edit/create book templates using one of several other apps. (Illustrator and InDesign come to mind.) That still hasn't happened months later. I had to give up on LR for making books. I guess if I wanted an alternative to creating books in iPhoto LR4 would be it, but I want a much more robust/flexible product. LR has so much potential for this. Why waste time and code adding stuff like Twitter and Flicker integration and give us a crippled book module?

I wanted to chime in on this since I do a ton of book layout. I currently use Fotofusion but it's a huge mess especially their port to Mac. Not only do they need to make the layouts flexible, they need to allow other features such as custom logo watermarking placement, size, rotation and alpha per page. In addition to JPEG quality, there needs to be an alternate option for max file size.

I gave up on the LR4 book module and went over to using LR4's publish function which links to Blurb's Booksmart. And, until LR4 fixes its Book module I shall have to give up on using any printer other than Blurb. This means I also have to give on on printing books that are US-letter sized. Its seems Adobe and Blurb are a little too close for comfort. Too bad, since LR is so brilliant in most other ways.

In the Book module of LR4, using option PDF, one is supposed to be able to "PDF Export options include size, resolution, color profile and output sharpening" but I cannot find any of these either on the LR4 'page' or during 'export book to PDF'. In particular I want to use a page size that is not specific to Blurb (I want US letter in landscape format). Is this feature not yet working or what?

Even though the LR Book Module has 180 or so templates, it never seems to have the one I want. Prior to LR 4, I used Blurb's BookSmart SW to create Blurb books and was hoping LR would at least have all the templates that ship with BookSmart. However it seems they do not. For example I can't find a LR template for a 3 photo page with 2 landscape and 1 portrait which is a mainstay of my books. So, here is my requst:

1) At a minumum include in LR all the templates that come with Blurb's BookSmart SW.

2) Allow us to create our own templates from scratch

3) Allow us to create our won templates by modifying a pre-exisitng template.

Perhaps allow LR to import templates from BookSmart including both those that shipped with BookSmart or were created by the use using BookSmart (thus avoiding the need for Adobe to build a template editor from scratch right away). As the BookSmart SW is free to end users this is a similar concept to using Google Maps in LR3 while the Adobe folks built their own mapping SW that showed up in LR4.

When working in the book module, I should be able to:
1 - Positon a text window anywhere I want
2 - Position a photo anywhere I want
3 - Size the text window to any dimension I want so long as the page can handle it
4 - Size the photo window to any dimension I want so long as the page allows it
5 - Use the provided frames on any dimension text or photo window I want
7 - Create and save my own page templates
8 - Be able to share page templates (has adobe thought of having a free market for saved templates provided by people)
9 - Import shared page templates from the free market
The pring module already has the built structure (the way you can organize a print page) that might be borrowed for the book module to provide the functionality of one through 4 above.

Book module: With the latest update of LR4, it's great you can now export your book as .jpeg. But please, we need custom sizes in stead of the fixed ones you can choose from now, or at least a book size in a 2/3 ratio! All pro cameras shoot in 2/3 so we need a book that can hold full page photos without losing parts of the image!

I agree with Butch_M's comment.

I haven't bought LR 4, because

* the book module is frustratingly half-finished without the ability to add your own templates.

* the new basic panel controls make it harder to start from a neutral point, create some problems regarding intuitive and predictable editing, and have/had issues, e.g., with clarity. One could have had better IQ without changing everything in an attempt to achieve Revel integration.

* performance has been an issue and according to user reports there is still quite some work to do.

I realize that two of the above points are off-topic in this topic, but had the book module been complete, I may have found a way to tolerate the other issues (or just use PV 2010).

I'm not ruling out upgrading to LR4 at some point, but it isn't a very urgent upgrade at all, given the (AFAIC) unnecessary changes to the basic panel controls, the lack of attractive features (book module not there yet) and the fact that nothing has been done towards the most popular feature request by far that even beats the uproar about the lack of LR4 performance.