It’s been a minute, huh?! I’m still deep in the querying trenches, so this isn’t the start of regular blog posts again or anything. Sorry. (Though I do have a few more I’d like to do percolating in the background.) I wanted to get this one out while it was fresh in my mind, however, and because it’s a really useful tool.

I’m not exactly burying the lead here, am I?

But before I get to the meat of my experience, for anyone who doesn’t know about book formatting or what the heck this Atticus thing is, lemme learn you a thing or two.

Basically, if you’re considering going the indie author route, you’re gonna have to do some formatting for your book. Anyone who’s ever done this before can tell you that ebook formatting doesn’t have to be too bad, but hoo boy! When you get to formatting for print, strap in. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

Formatting for Ebooks vs. Print

When you’re doing an ebook, you can go as simple as…

Title page
Front matter (that’s all the stuff at the beginning like a copyright page, lists of other books you’ve published, dedication, etc.)
Ensuring there’s clear delineation between chapters
And then your back matter (acknowledgements, about the author, sneak peeks at other books, etc.).

And that’s basically it. Because ebooks use what’s called a reflowable layout, they end up being pretty flexible once they’re in a reader’s hands. For instance, if a reader needs the font to be bigger, they just make it bigger on their device and voila! the book flows into that new font size and adjusts everything to where it needs to be.

If you have a basic understanding of using word processors, this shouldn’t be too hard… unless you don’t know what you don’t know.

For instance, did you know that you’re meant to use a Page Break to move onto the next page and not just hitting the Enter/Return button until the next section gets to the next page? It’s true. All those Enter/Return hits translate to something very different in an epub than using a page break.

And that’s another thing. Your ebook will need to be converted to an epub, as that’s the format that e-reading devices like Kindle readers, Nooks, and tablets use. That’s the format ebooks are sold in on every platform. And platforms like KDP and Draft 2 Digital will convert a Word document to an epub for you, but even then, there might be some squiffy little issues.

So actually, formatting your ebook might get complicated in pretty short order.

And what’s the deal with print books then? Well, you see, print books aren’t reflowable like ebooks. What you upload for your print book is completely fixed. You’ll note that platforms for distributing your print books, such as Ingram Spark and KDP, require you to upload a PDF. So what you see on the PDF pages is what a reader holding a physical copy of your book will see. That means it needs to be the correct size, according to whatever trim size you chose. It needs to have enough space between the pages (this is called the gutter) so that sentences aren’t disappearing down into the spine. And it should look nice, as nice as traditionally published books with page numbers and headers and all that.

And none of this covers what happens if you want chapter heading artwork, map images, scene break images, or <shudder> sizing a print book cover appropriately.

Formatting Options

Wow, okay, that sounds like a lot. So what can can we as indie authors do?

Me, about to pull out some great tricks for y’all

Well, you can learn book formatting yourself and just do it yourself. Full disclosure, this is what I do because I started with a leg up. Once upon a time, document formatting was part of my responsibilities for a corporate gig I worked. Maybe one day I’ll offer a class, but don’t hold your breath.

You can also hire that 💩 out. There are oodles of companies out there offering myriad services to indie authors. I personally recommend Platform House. I’m not getting a kickback or anything for this. I’ve just known Becky for years and have worked with her too. She and the rest of the team are fantastic to work with and really care about delivering great service to indie authors, so I don’t mind giving them a shoutout. But you should know that hiring out your formatting is the most expensive option. It’ll save you time, yes, but it’s a new cost per book every time. These are the trade-offs you’ve got to decide between.

Or you can use a program like Kindlepreneur's Atticus for it. Which, if you want a niddle-of-the-road option between complete DIY and hiring it out, that’s what I recommend.

“But, Dana,” you might say, “isn’t there that Vellum program, too, that does the same thing?”

Yes, Vellum is also out there, and I know a lot of authors like it. And you can try it free for 30 days, but I don’t think it measures up for three main reasons:

It’s cheaper.
It works on multiple operating systems, not just Mac like Vellum does.
It has more features.

There’s a full comparison chart here (admittedly, made by Kindlepreneur, so they’re biased), but based on my experience, I think the facts check out. Again, I’m not getting a kickback or anything for this. I just know how frustrating book formatting can be and I want to inform my fellow indie authors about ways to make it easier.

Yes, Draft 2 Digital also has some post-upload formatting options for you, but honestly, they’re so limited, I think they’re more of a hindrance than a help.

How Does Atticus Help You?

This isn’t meant to be a tutorial for using Atticus. You can find that here on their website. Instead, this is my opinion on who Atticus can help and how, based on my 10+ years of book formatting and publishing experience.

Basically is comes down to 1) providing supportive resources within the program for creating a book and 2) streamlining the formatting process (with caveats).

We’ll start with resources. Something I really appreciated while testing the Atticus program is their collection of preloaded pages. When you choose to add a dedication page, for instance, not only does the program add a new page for a dedication, but that new page includes a short description of what a dedication is for and who might want to use it. Thanks, Atticus! Even better, when you opt to add a copyright page, Atticus already has the standard legal jargon stuff already loaded onto the page for you.

I cannot emphasize enough how helpful this is, especially for folks who are just getting started with book publishing. Instead of searching for the appropriate language and hoping it’s right, Atticus has done that work for you. And they are very concerned with doing things like this correctly, that Atticus actually lacks an important feature for fear of authors getting themselves into some hot copyright infringement water, but more on that later.

And they’ve got loads of different front and back matter bits that you can easily add and edit.

Another massive resource that Atticus provides is the ability to easily choose or change your trim size for printed books.

5x8 is standard for trade paperbacks (that’s large paperbacks), but your cost to print author copies varies with the size and number of pages. And while I personally think indie authors should follow the standard, the choice is yours. Omnibuses, however, run the gamut for sizes. KDP’s cost/royalty calculator can be found here, and you can use Atticus to quickly see how many pages a 5x8 book would cost as compared to, say, a 7x10 book and then use the calculator to figure out which would get you higher royalties.

An did you catch in the photo that they provide a little color-coded guide as to which sizes are supported by KDP and Ingram Spark? That’s a huge help in a small package.

Not gonna lie, just the print formatting piece was nearly enough to sway me away from DIY.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Kindlepreneur also has a free print book formatting tool. That’s here, but TBH, it’s not nearly as robust and you still have to paste the text of your book into the template. And that can get extremely tricky, especially when it comes to preserving certain little text features, like words you’ve italicized for emphasis. Imagine having to search back through an entire book just to find all the italicized words. Just saying.

Finally, I’d like to highlight the way that Atticus allows you to easily add art to your book and make it even more beautiful and unique. Whether it’s simple chapter headers, such as what I was considering using for my forthcoming book (available for preorder here)…

…or more complex full page images like they use in their examples…

This image taken from one of their formatting guides **here**

…Atticus has customizable options for all of that. I didn’t end up using that figs image in my book, but Atticus allowed me to quickly and easily test out different options.

And because they have numerous view options (Kindle, iPad, print, Samsung, etc.), you can quickly and easily check that your book looks great everywhere.

Plus, if you do get lost, the development team clearly spent a lot of time creating learning resources to help you get back on track.

As far as streamlining, while Atticus provides a delightfully comprehensive guide here as to how to get your book ready for upload, I gotta be honest with y’all.

I didn’t read it.

I just plowed ahead like a bull in a china shop and uploaded my manuscript without doing any prep work.

Me, uploading my manuscript without reading any of the instructions

And can you guess what happened? It was fine. I don’t know for sure, but I can’t help but wonder if Atticus wasn’t designed with numpties like me in mind. They had to know the program was gonna have to face off against people like me, and they wanted to make sure it would win. Atticus is pretty intuitive as to how a document ought to convert to look like a book. And changing a line, such as into a chapter heading, is as easy as a few clicks.

There’s definitely a bit of work on the front end, especially if you want to really customize your book and create a new theme from scratch, but that’s one of the really great things about Atticus. Once the theme is made, it’s insanely easy to apply to the next book, and the next, and the next.

There’s also a whole book-writing component of the program that I haven’t even talked about, but that’s not what this post is about.

Except I Returned It

I realize I probably seem like I’m talking out of both sides of my mouth by making such a big dang deal about how great Atticus is but don’t use it myself. First of all, let’s all appreciate that Atticus has a no-questions-asked returns policy within 30 days of purchase. And that’s exactly what I experienced when I did end up returning it. So take heart; you can always give it a go and know that if you end up feeling like it’s not worth your money, you can say, “thank you, but no thank you.”

So why did I decide against using it in the end. This was very much a personal/style decision. You see, the one major drawback I see with Atticus is that you can only use the fonts they have preloaded. Don’t get me wrong, they’ve got a lot of options. And this is totally fine if you don’t already have an established style guide for your books. But I’m putting out my sixth book in the Broken Gears series, and they don’t have the fonts I use for those and there’s no option to upload your own. This is the official statement from Atticus on the subject:

“We’re currently researching different licensing options for allowing user imported fonts. We want to be sure to protect all our authors as well as ensure everything is safely and legally handled through Atticus.”

— Fonts Available Within Atticus ( https://www.atticus.io/fonts-available-within-atticus/ )

I can’t be mad at that. Most people, authors included, don’t realize that fonts are under the same copyright restrictions as images. This is the part where I say I’m not a lawyer and therefore can’t give legal advice. But basically, you gotta check the font that you use to make sure you’re legally allowed to use it for your book.

I also mentioned earlier that I have a lot of experience formatting books. And there were one or two weird little things about the new book I’m putting out (like the context ephemera at the beginning of each chapter) that gave me some problems. And again, my extremely specific style guide (which includes drop caps, amongst other things) made it hard to manage that in Atticus. Thus, I just ended up doing the formatting myself like I always have. But I think I only lost three hours tops playing with the program before deciding it wasn’t for me.

Conclusion

So in the end, while Atticus didn’t end up being right for me and where I am in my author journey, I think it absolutely is a banger option for most authors. And whenever the day comes that I start on a new series, I might go back to it.

If you have any questions about my experience using Atticus, let me know in the comments below 👇 and I’ll answer them.

Thanks for reading!