I did spend some time getting some LLM to write a generator (in C++) of a scribus XML file for automatic layout, but it wasn't effective. I need to get back to looking at that, as it would be very useful. As my photos range in aspect ratios and formats (4:3 and 3:2) and I have thousands and thousands of RAW photos to process and "finish", it's an ongoing work! So for now I am just doing it manually, with the help of some layout scripts.

As I store everything in a local Vikunja instance for notes and WIP, here's the list of links I assembled relative to this (hopefully useful; it includes calendar templates so that I can make them for my mother-in-law):

https://github.com/berteh/ScribusGenerator

https://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Useful_Free_Resources

https://www.opendesktop.org/p/1106678

https://www.opendesktop.org/browse?cat=196&page=1&ord=latest

https://www.pling.com/s/Artwork/browse?cat=196&ord=latest

https://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/CalendarWizard

https://github.com/RaffertyR/Year-Calendar-Script-for-Scribu...

https://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Category:Scripts

https://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Making_a_photobook_from_a_di...

https://wiki.rjcalow.co.uk/photography/make/designaphotobook...

https://github.com/PPSchL/scribus-photobook-scripts

https://github.com/RaffertyR/PhotoBookTools-for-Scribus

https://forums.scribus.net/index.php?topic=4081.0

https://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Automatic_import_of_images_f...

https://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Photo_Albums

https://github.com/hawbox/scribus-book-templates

https://forums.scribus.net/index.php?topic=3735.0

http://johnosterhout.com/basic-book-template-for-scribus/

When you find a print shop, they'll talk about margins and bleeds, so it might be worth finding a print shop first to know what bleed zones you want on the pages and whether they expect left page first, or right page first.

Once you know that, you can set up Scribus appropriately.