There are a couple of things that need clarifying here: when you say "Adobe" or "Acrobat" do you mean Adobe Acrobat Pro or Adobe Reader (formerly Adobe Acrobat Reader)? I have no experience with the latter, but have used Pro for many years, first as a stand-alone and later when it became part of Creative Suite.
I do not use Acrobat Pro to create publications, although I suppose it is possible, to certain extent. To overcome limitations of a word processing app, such as Word or Writer, you'd ideally need a page layout app, like InDesign, CorelDRAW, PageMaker, etc, etc. However, as you said, if your requirements are not terribly demanding, it is possible to use either a text editor, or a pdf editor. If your Mac is recent enough to benefit from free iWorks, then I suggest you give Pages a very close look - it is much more capable, as far page layout work is concerned, than any other text editor I've used.
As to logistics and workflow, I still prefer to keep (and create) text in a text app, then insert into text frames in a page layout app, add illustrations, save as editable layout file, and finally create pdf of whatever type is required - online distribution pdf is significantly different from a pre-press one I upload to my printers...