Ian Douglas writes:
Have any ALUG members had any experience of printing books like this, and
if
so what DTP package did you use?
This sounds to me more like a print processing application, rather than DTP.
In Windows the best (imho) package for this type of thing is FinePrint. A google for "fineprint linux" shows several people asking for a Linux equivalent, and there are several answers (KDEPrint, for example; look for the Filters tab in the "properties" of the print dialog). A good place to start anyway.
DTP in Linux I've not played with but Scribus always gets a mention, so I'd look there too.