Word - PDF - PageMaker?

[gregkedro]

I saw one thread on this forum about this subject, but it still left me a little confused so please excuse a similar post.

My question is this: Can I "print" my MS Word (Win2kPro) file to a high-res, multi-paged PDF and import that into PageMaker in order to print books? Or, do I have to save each page as a separate PDF and import each PDF, then, page by page, into PageMaker?

Or, frankly, should I just be writing my books in PageMaker?

I am in the process of writing five or six books, all due out around the end of the year. There will be more on the way, around 2 or 4 a year. So, volume is a consideration in what I'm dealing with.

One of my books was small (150 pages) so I did a trial run with a printer. It was a nightmare, of course. They took my Word file, sent it to a graphic artist who did a copy-paste on each and every page, from Word to PageMaker. Then she had to reformat everything - bolds, italics, headers, footers, table of contents, et al. Three days she spent on a book of 150 pages. And I was not pleased with the errors.

Around December I am going to have 2 books to print that are between 500 and 700 pages long. There will also be another 150-page book and at least one more of between 300 and 500 pages. Can you imagine doing a copy-paste for all of that? And then going line by line from my original and resetting all the formats exactly like I had them?

That's my dilema.

My questions are above.

I've checked into getting PageMaker, and it looks fairly do-able via an eBay purchase (I qualify for educational versions). But, it would be so (!) much easier to simply print a high-res (600dpi? 1200? 2400?) PDF and import it into PageMaker.

But, does that require a separate PDF for each page? Or can PageMaker handle an import of a multiple page document, like a 700-page book?

If you gotten this far, thank you for your patience (I know, it's a long post). And, if you can help me with a little advice I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thank you.
-Greg K.