[Scribus] Book guts and cover

[John Jason Jordan]

I have agreed to print and bind (I have the equipment) a reader for the
people of an endangered language in Guinea, west Africa. This is a pro
bono project, as I will charge nothing for the work. I intend to use
Scribus as far as possible.

Unfortunately, the professor who did the field work contracted with a
local "book designer." This person will set the book with Microsoft
Word. No, there is no possibility of changing this. It is a done deal
and the person has already completed most of the work. The silver
lining is that the person has been told to export the file as PDF. I do
not have the authority to ask for the original text file and reset the
book with Scribus.

The book will be 120 pages +. It will be half-letter, that is 5 1/2
wide by 8 1/2 high. The designer person will set the document
properties in Word to this size. The resulting PDF should also be this
size.

The document will be printed on high speed laser. The laser is capable
of duplexing and most any standard page size you want. It is my laser,
so I am in control of this end of the operation.

The document will have pages as follows:

First side:
 ---------------------------
|                |                |
|    p1        |    p1        |
|                |                |
|                |                |
---------------------------

Second side:
---------------------------
|                |                |
|    p2        |    p2        |
|                |                |
|                |                |
---------------------------

The result is that each copy printed will actually be two copies. After
printing the two copies will be sliced in two with the guillotine,
resulting in two identical copies, each half-letter.

So if I want to do the layout of the PDF files in Scribus, how do I
place the PDF files on pages in Scribus? How can I be sure I did it
right?