I just finished a book project entirely in Designer Pro X9. The book is a fictionalized collection of stories of Chinese women who used a secret alphabet called Nu Shu (which is real) to communicate with their woman friends. They sewed the characters into garments and painted them onto objects such as fans. The Chinese men did not know it was an actual alphabet and could not read the characters.
The cover illustration is based on a 16th century portrait of a Chinese woman.
I formatted 175 pages using the 1-column format and styles and the process went a lot faster than I would have thought.
I had to add the page numbers manually however, because the automatic page numbering cannot be modified and on a spread starts with the odd number on the right which is backwards for book numbering. And page 1 does not occur until 11 pages into the book.
I am hoping this short coming will be addressed soon as Designer (or Page & Layout Designer) are perfect for this kind of work.