Designing Books With Multiple Master Pages

[Guest]

Dear all,

I am a book designer. Like any typical book with chapters, the first page of each chapter is different from the subsequent pages. My InDesign template has two different master pages.  My A-Master is designed for the non-first pages and my B-Master, based on A, sets up the layout correctly for the first page. And the template file contains one page with the B-Master correctly assigned to it. The problem is that when I paste or import text into that first page, the automatically generated subsequent pages are automatically assigned as B-Master. Then I have to manually change all the pages after the first page the A-Master. Once I manually change them, everything is in order. Is there not a setting or technique whereby this could be less manual. I also worry that I might forget to manually reassign subsequent pages. Any ideas or advice would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Warmly,

Jonathan

[Jongware]

I have the same set-up for standard books: a template with all styles, and a master page A for 'regular' pages and B for the title page (yep, eventhe same names).

The trick is that you can have as many pages in your template as you want. Add an A page after your first B page, and add a linked text frame to each. When you import text into this frame on the first page, it will fill automatically and then run overo to the second page, which will then repeat.

[Guest]

Hi "Jongware,"

Yes, it seems like we have (almost) the identical template. The only difference is that I failed to link the main text frame in the second page. This makes perfect sense how the link would force text to the second page and then duplicating that one versus the first-page B-Master. I guess the one and only drawback to this method is the occasional "chapter" which is not more than one page—because then the second page which comes with the template would have to be manually deleted. Our books have a lot of short quotes and excerpts, so this won't be too infrequent. That said, do you agree that this method is still the best possible solution, even if the second page must be deleted when not needed?

Warmly,

Jonathan

[Jongware]

Sure, if deleting that second page occurs much less than having to change all next pages to the correct master.

I have a shortcut key assigned to  Set Master Page (very convenient on Windows because you can use Tab to navigate and select another master; much less so on a Mac where you can't). I didn't try but it should be possible to set a shortcut key combo to Delete Page as well. 

[Randy Hagan · Accepted solution]

Not to speak for the first person who answered your question, but a two-page template (to use your example, a B-Master chapter start, followed with an A-Master standard page) really works pretty slick.

Drop your guides on the chapter start if you want to place the copy block differently than the standard page, get your text, line it up against the guides for your page one-chapter start and Shift-click with the Place Gun cursor to fill page one, then fill page two-standard page, then if needed InDesign will create a new page three-standard page and fill it, same with page four and so on until the chapter is initially laid out.

For those one-page chapters, the blank page two can provide an additional benefit. If each chapter starts on a right-hand page, as common book design practice, you can just delete the master page items/folio information for that blank page two to add your slip page to the chapter layout. It makes assembling the chapters with you InDesign book functions much simpler and more consistent.

So Jongware is giving you the right workflow to serve many masters here.

Good luck,

Randy

[Creamer Training · Accepted solution]

There are some plugins that can apply a master page bases on style usage:

https://indesignsecrets.com/topic/applying-a-master-based-on-paragraph-style

(Adobe FrameMaker can do this on it's own; InDesign really needs some long document feature updates.)

If I didn't want to spend any money, I would build my template with your standard left/right master and just change the first page after flowing the text. I guess it would depend on how many single-page documents vs. multi-page documents.