Well, that's a very hard question to answer without additional details.
If it's graphics/presentation heavy, you most likely will need something like InDesign.
If there is a lot of math, you'll need something like Latex (typist).
If there are a lot of tables, you probably need something like Word to auto-update embeds from Excel.
In general, Word will allow you to control features like footnotes/endnotes, tables of figures, etc, much better than Pages ever will.
If it's mostly literature, you can use something like Vellum (https://vellum.pub/)
I don't have a list of solutions ready, but maybe I should make one. This is a complex problem, and the safe answer is usually to just use Word.
The problem with Pages is that it is extremely mediocre at everything while still locking you down to Apple hardware.
The young, foolish version of myself was a rabid Apple fanboy and pushed people to use Pages (back in the day when the iWork suite was paid but cheaper). Then people came back to me with problems that could be solved in Word relatively easily, but I had no answer for with Pages.
After being tired of saying, "no you can't do that" or "that has to be done manually," I stopped advocating for Pages.
I don't do much document preparation nowadays, but I think the ideal solution would be a GUI to bridge between web publishing and paper publishing.
If it's graphics/presentation heavy, you most likely will need something like InDesign. If there is a lot of math, you'll need something like Latex (typist). If there are a lot of tables, you probably need something like Word to auto-update embeds from Excel. In general, Word will allow you to control features like footnotes/endnotes, tables of figures, etc, much better than Pages ever will.
If it's mostly literature, you can use something like Vellum (https://vellum.pub/)
I don't have a list of solutions ready, but maybe I should make one. This is a complex problem, and the safe answer is usually to just use Word.
The problem with Pages is that it is extremely mediocre at everything while still locking you down to Apple hardware.
The young, foolish version of myself was a rabid Apple fanboy and pushed people to use Pages (back in the day when the iWork suite was paid but cheaper). Then people came back to me with problems that could be solved in Word relatively easily, but I had no answer for with Pages.
After being tired of saying, "no you can't do that" or "that has to be done manually," I stopped advocating for Pages.
I don't do much document preparation nowadays, but I think the ideal solution would be a GUI to bridge between web publishing and paper publishing.