My new book will be read from either the front cover or the back cover, i.e. half of the book will have to be typeset upside down. I can easily do this in MS Word by creating page-sized Text Boxes, rotating them, and linking them. However, I am trying to rid my life of MS! Is there a way to achieve the same effect in LibreOffice? It seems to me that Frames can be linked but NOT rotated 180 degrees, whereas Text Boxes can be rotated 180 degrees but NOT linked. Please, can anyone think of some way to solve this conundrum that I may have overlooked? Thank you!
What is the final medium? If it is paper, create two “ordinary” documents, one for each part. Print separately. Assemble both piles after rotating one of them.
You may need to use a different application to finalize your document if you need all in a single file, e.g. to submit to a printing service.
Scribus should do the job. It can link multiple content frames, flip/rotate them, and it supports ODF file types for content source. You will probably need to redo headers and footers, and check any graphic content for consistent placement.
More work may be required. It’s been a few years since I used Scribus (or any DTP app), so i have certainly forgotten parts of the workflow Test with small samples before you rely on it for a larger job.