You’ve fought through the first draft. You’ve worked with your editor to complete all the passes needed to make your book the best it can be. It’s ready to become a book. Now what? Read on to see if you could benefit from Atticus, a new book writing software. 

I had an acquaintance who self-published a book last year. She brought me a copy and asked me to take a look.

The cover was absolutely perfect. She’d hired a designer and it showed.

But as soon as I flipped through it, I knew she had skipped some critical steps. What tipped me off? The interior formatting. 

The last leg of getting your book into the hands of your readers includes a number of smaller steps that will make all the difference in how your book looks to readers. Most writers know they have to get a great cover, but many don’t realize the interior is just as important. 

What’s interior formatting and why does my book need it?

Open a book and take a look at how things are organized. Title pages look different than chapter openings. Look at where the page numbers fall (especially on chapter opening pages). Notice how the headings work on each page—some have the author on one side and the title of the book or chapter on the other. 

Then look at the body text. Look at the spacing. The fonts and size.

This is where I noticed my friend’s oversight. It looked like a Word document that had been formatted for a school report—not a book.

All of these details are a part of the interior formatting, meaning the way the words are laid out on the page, and your book needs interior formatting to look professional. Publishers pay professionals to do interior formatting, but as an indie or self-published author, how can you make sure your book looks just as professional without spending thousands of dollars?  

Thankfully, formatting is one area that is easy to learn if you have the right software. Up until now, Vellum has been the go-to for Mac users, but Atticus is a new option for writing and formatting, especially for those working on PCs.

Atticus is not only for book formatting. It’s a solid piece of book writing software as well, and in this post I’ll share my thoughts on the software, along with an overview of the features I love the most, so you can decide if Atticus is a good fit for your book writing software needs. 

For transparency: I was not paid for my review, and the links below are not affiliate links. Just passing along a review of a great tool. Now, let's look at Atticus!

What is Atticus?

Atticus is a writing and formatting tool built to be an all-in-one solution for writers. Imagine if an advanced online word processor (think Scrivener meets Google Docs) and Vellum got together in one program—you’d have Atticus. 

Atticus is created by Dave Chesson, who is also the mind behind Publisher Rocket (see our review for Publisher Rocket here), which means this is coming from a team who really understands authors and the publishing industry.

So let’s start with the features that would have helped my self-published friend with her book’s interior. Atticus excels as a formatting tool, and its features allow you to:

• Create unique chapter design themes
• Adjust your book size, font size, line spacing, and font styles
• Quickly add back and front matter (like copyright pages, epigraph pages, title and half title pages, and more)
• Generate e-books and print books with the click of a button
• Preview how it all looks on different reading devices like Kindle, iPhone, and print

As I have played with Atticus, I’ve found that it’s both intuitive and fairly advanced. You can easily pick a formatting template and leave it at that, but if you want to adjust every single font style or size for every element on the page, you can do that too. 

Why Consider Atticus?

One of the reasons I think Atticus might be a game-changer for authors is that it runs on multiple operating systems. Vellum has only ever been for Mac, and their own website says that they do not have plans for a PC version. 

As a Mac user, that’s been fine for me personally, and I’ve designed more than a dozen books on Vellum. But I also hear from many authors in our community who’d love an option to format beautiful books regardless of their operating system.

Also, Vellum is a little expensive, even for established authors.

This is where Atticus comes in.

1. It costs $147, which is $100 less than you would pay for the same capabilities on Vellum.
2. It is available on virtually every platform, including PC, Mac, Linux, and Chromebook.

I'll also add that the current version of Atticus is just the beginning. I know that Dave and the Atticus team have future plans for the software that will be even cooler for authors, which I’ll talk about more later in this review.

The Important Atticus Features

Here are the key areas we’ll focus on for this review:

1. Book formatting
2. Writing in Atticus
3. Chapter theme builder
4. Cloud and offline use
5. Future features I'm excited about

Let's dive into these one by one.

1. Book Formatting

Honestly, the formatting is currently Atticus's best feature. It has everything you need to make beautifully designed print and ebooks, including the same features you’d find in a formatting program like Vellum. These include:

• Full customization: You can customize almost anything, from font face, font size, titles and subtitles, images, and spacing.
• Ornamental breaks: You can choose from a variety of provided ornamental breaks or you can upload your own.
• Export options: You can export to EPUB, print-ready PDFs, and DOCX.
• Import options: You can also import DOCX and RTF files to easily load your book. It would be nice to have more formats supported, but I understand they’re working on this.
• Device previewer: If you want to see what your book will look when it’s published, there’s a handy previewer that displays your book in various formats, from print to iPhone to Kindle and others.
• Large print options: If you want to format a large print book (which is more than just changing the font size), Atticus has pre-built settings for this as well.
• Full bleed images: If you want to have images that extend to the edges of your page, you can set those up as well.

I could go on with some of the smaller features, but those are the big ones.

2. Book Writing

As a writing program, Atticus boasts an entirely different set of features:

• Word processor: Atticus has a standard word processor with everything you would expect (i.e. boldface, italics, headings, etc.).
• Reusable elements: One cool feature with Atticus is that you can create reusable elements such as an author bio page so you can use it again in other books. And you can set it to update all books when you make a change to that element. Huge time-saver for authors of many different books!
• ProWritingAid integration and spell check: Atticus has its own standard spell check already built in, but if you own ProWritingAid, it integrates, which is great when editing your books. To see our review on ProWritingAid, click here. 
• Word count: You can easily see your word count by selection, chapter, or the entire book.
• Front and back matter: Atticus uses chapter elements to easily understand what goes in the front matter, what goes in the main body of your text, and what goes in the back matter.
• Goal setting: Atticus has a nifty feature that lets you track your goals and writing habits to gamify the whole process.
  

3. Chapter Theme Builder

One book formatting feature Atticus includes that I haven’t mentioned is the ability to build beautiful chapter themes. 

Not only can you customize every element on your chapter page, including the chapter title, subtitle, number, headers, and page numbers, but you can also add images.

There are two types of images that you can add: image elements and full-bleed images.

Image elements can be placed among your title and subtitle elements, and full-bleed images can extend to the edges of your page, assuming you are formatting it for a print book.

In other words, there are some beautiful possibilities using this thing, and I'm excited to try out all the features they’ve added.

4. Cloud and Offline Use

Atticus is primarily a cloud-based book writing software, which comes with a pro and a con:

• Pro: you have an instant backup of all your work. 
• Con: you must have internet access to use it. 

While you can download the software and use it offline, you will need to be online to log in and to export your books.

This also is what allows Atticus to be multi-platform, running on MacOS, Windows, Chrome, and other platforms. Also, some of the upcoming features (collaboration in particular) require an online connection. 

5. Upcoming Features and the Future of Atticus

Atticus is still in the early days of development, and there are other features in the works that will make this book writing program even better for authors. 

• Collaboration: This is the big one. With Atticus, you will be able to collaborate with other authors, editors, and even book formatters all within the program. No more sending files back and forth to your co-author. Google docs has always been my standard for collaboration, but Atticus will make the process much easier and more effective for authors. 
• Dark mode: Great news for authors who like writing in dark mode. 
• Plotting tools: This would allow you to plot and organize your pre-writing work, as well as potentially integrate with other third-party plotting tools.

It will be fun to see how Atticus evolves. Keep an eye on this review as we track the changes and how this software improves. 

Atticus Review: Is Atticus Right for Me?

Atticus is still new to the book writing software scene, but while I still use Vellum and Scrivener for most writing projects, I can see myself more and more relying on Atticus for writing, formatting, and soon collaboration. 

For non-Mac users though, it could become your go-to book formatting tool, which is great news. 

I also know that given Dave Chesson's track record with Publisher Rocket, Atticus will only get better for any writer who wants a single, inexpensive solution to writing and formatting.

Atticus will help you:

• Format a beautiful book on any platform
• Write and edit a great book 
• Give you the creative tools for your book to stand out

As with Publisher Rocket, Atticus has excellent customer support, so if you do run into any problems, or need help, you can easily get the help you need.

And they offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, so if you decide it isn't for you, you can get your money back.

Think Atticus is right for you? Download it here or read on for my final review.