When I started self-publishing almost a decade ago, there were articles on how to format that could be found online but little else regarding guidance and help. Back then, finding information on what standard formatting should look like was impossible! With the upcoming release of the final book in The Iron Soul series, I had the chance to look around and take stock of how much the self-publishing landscape has changed.
A few months ago, I discovered the online software tool Atticus, and it has been amazing. This tool has the mascot of a dog with glasses and calls itself a writer’s best friend. I am inclined to agree. The Atticus team not connected to me. I just want to share my experience with this program in an honest review.
Atticus is a book formatting software that works across all platforms and can be used online or downloaded to a device. As of writing this review in May 2023, Atticus operates on a one-time payment plan of $149 that includes everything. There is a 30-Day money-back guarantee, and you get access to all future updates. It is designed to also serve as a writing platform with authors typing directly into the software and using its save and backup system. I prefer to write in desktop documents, so this is a feature that I’m not using, but it is available. If you don’t write in Atticus, you can upload documents into the software for formatting.
In preparation for the release of The Iron Crown, I had all of the prior books re-edited and decided to reformat with the new tool available to me. What had been a long and difficult process was suddenly significantly easier. Gone are the days of paying someone to format for you or muddling through each line of the book and trying to use code to create a stable epub file. Formatting used to take me a couple of days of occasionally very frustrating work, but with Atticus, I reformatted all twelve of my earlier books within a couple of hours. Not only was the final result much easier to achieve, but it looked cleaner and crisper, thanks to their options.
Using the customization options, I created a personal template for The Iron Soul series that includes a triskelion image as part of the start of each chapter. This is a small detail, but it helps add a professional and stylish flare to the books. You can decide the size of your planned print copy books and the font size for the exportation of a pdf that is publisher ready. I print paperbacks that are 8.5 by 5.5 and decided on a font size of 11 in the advanced options. From there, it was only a short wait for the system to add the page numbers, generate the table of contents for me, and create a pdf that I could download. Generating and downloading the epub version is even easier.
In my opinion, Atticus is a great investment if you have formatting needs for publishing. At a reasonable one-time cost, you will quickly save money compared to paying someone else to format your books or save yourself a lot of your time. If errors are discovered, it is easy to go to the saved file within Atticus and fix a word or tweak a setting before redownloading your pdf or epub. There are two viewing options, one for writing, where you can make changes, and the other for formatting, where you determine how things will look and go through a preview page by page. All options are easy to find, and you can see the result of any changes you make immediately, making it simpler to track down potential issues. In addition, you can access some great customization tools, and the system is easy to navigate with only a brief learning curve.
If Atticus existed when I first started self-publishing, my journey would have been much easier. I will not miss formatting; just the time Atticus saved me on reformatting my older books made me feel that I had already gotten my money’s worth. So even if I never use Atticus again, I am happy with the purchase, but I suspect that the little dog with glasses and me will be seeing plenty of each other in the future.