Have you tried using data driven pages yet? It was released with version 10 of ArcGIS for Desktop and it makes the process creating a map book so much easier. A good example is a river feature. Making one map for a single, long river will not show enough detail for most practical applications. Using data driven pages allows you to specify the length along the river you want each map to portray – say 2 miles – and then it creates a series of maps each showing a different 2 mile stretch of the river.
Create a Strip Map Index for Line FeaturesYou may have a polygon layer — say counties — that you want to define the extent of each of your maps. If you do not, then you can use the Strip Map Index Features geoprocessing tool. From there, you simply set up your data driven pages and ArcMap will do the work for you.
In this short video, I show you it’s done from start to finish.