I have spent several weeks working with Sue Bavey, producing the internal layout for a new anthology she has collected from 20 different authors titled Not Marriage Material. It had the potential to be incredibly challenging as we worked, alongside the amazing cover designer Bjørn Larssen, across multiple time zones from the US to Europe to Turkiye. It shows how good we are as a team that, whatever setbacks we encountered, we all helped each other with never a cross word. It made it a truly special experience.
It has also allowed me to put the self-publishing tool, Atticus, through its paces. We’ve had to contend with prose, poetry, and photographs. If there were any bugs in the system, we were going to find them.
I have given Atticus the right to reply, primarily because some issues I encountered may well be down to me and not the software. When I had issues, customer service was always quick to reply and very helpful. In my view, that alone is worth the $147 I paid for a lifetime subscription.
It’s important to point out my computer is about to draw its old age pension. My internet speeds are also very slow. I only use Atticus through my browser. It means I can work on any device with internet access and all my work is saved. The age of my computer and the slow rate of the internet access are the reason the software at times felt clunky. I can’t blame that on Atticus.
No software is perfect. We all work around the parts that are confusing or don’t work. Microsoft Office is a prime example. Atticus, however, is a pleasant surprise. Its flaws are far outweighed by its strengths.
It contains some bugs which are both strange and frustrating.
Let’s start with the flaws.
If you’re self-publishing poetry, Atticus can be the ultimate pain in the rear end. On the ePub version, it is best to change the paragraph settings to spaced rather than indented. It allows you to use the old Word trick to reduce line spacing for the verses, but has larger spacing between each verse. You could use an ornamental break between each verse, but this could become overpowering and certainly won’t work for all poetry. It also won’t work on the print pdf. The verse button is also strange. It creates some very odd spacing that is, frankly, of no use for long poems. It is good for quoting short verses of poetry amongst prose, however. Poetry is notoriously hard to layout properly. Atticus proved more foe than friend, although I did eventually find ways around the issues, even if it involved compromises.
Atticus response: We’re aware of the limitations for publishing poetry within Atticus and, though we do have future plans to improve this area of need, I do think you were fair in your characterization at this point.
Atticus does not show error messages. This is beyond frustrating. I wasted many hours trying to identify issues when a basic error message could have pointed me in the right direction. I also wouldn’t have needed to overwhelm the helpdesk with questions, although they answered all of them with good humour and quickly.
Atticus response: We understand your frustration with the lack of error messages and it’s something we’re looking into options. Unfortunately Atticus is programmed to know when something will not give the desired output, but programming in the why is a lot bigger of an task, on the programming end. Authors are very creative in their formatting goals, so it’s always best to write into support, where our human team can help identify issues with you.
One issue I can’t understand is why chapter headings sometimes split words, leaving one letter on a line with the rest of the word on the next. It took a lot of time to find the correct font size, particularly in an anthology of short stories and poetry. This is a relatively recent issue, as I didn’t run into it when putting together the layout for Stories From A Stray. It is one that needs resolving. I’m sure if I spent time with the excellent customer service team we could troubleshoot the problem and find the solution. It’s not something we’ve had the time to do. It is possible it’s down to my slow internet speed and a very outdated web browser.
It is best to duplicate a copy of your book so you can work separately on ePub and paperback versions. The layouts will never be the same. There is one drawback which can easily be resolved. A duplicate copy will add the word Copy to the title page. It’s useful for differentiating when working on the layouts, but don’t forget to remove the erroneous word in the title when downloading the final version.
My final issue was one most will never run into, and possibly one I’m wrong about. You cannot add your own design to the title page. I’m aware there are good reasons, but it’s frustrating, especially with multiple authors and a requirement to retype the entire author name area if there is one letter to change as there is no edit facility.
Atticus response: For your title page, while you can’t edit the automated copy, you can delete it and create our own either out of an image or just a standard chapter that is adjusted how you’d like it to look.
I would like to see a way layout can be changed by chapter and more options to change certain paragraphs within chapters. It would certainly help with poetry. Hopefully, this is something that can be explored, although I doubt there’s a simple answer.
In pushing Atticus to its limits, these were the only issues I came across. It’s a very strong vote of confidence.
Atticus has saved me days, if not weeks, with its functionality. It’s simple to use, although a couple of hours familiarising yourself with it wouldn’t go amiss.
The video tutorials are easy to follow and cover all the functionality most self-publishing authors will require. Some expert level tutorials would be nice, but are far from a necessity.
I type my chapters using ProWritingAid, export them as a word document, and then import each individual chapter into Atticus. I then, always, hit the smart quotes button. It is something worth doing in each individual chapter. I haven’t worked out how to rectify the very rare errant quotation mark facing the wrong direction, but I’m confident there is a way. It’s such a rare occurrence, it’s not something to worry about.
In conclusion, if you intend to self-publish more than one book, Atticus is a game changer. It is far superior to the competition. The addition of being able to split a book into parts was welcome and incredibly simple to use.
It’s an excellent piece of software that works out far cheaper than any other tools. The option to use it online anywhere is brilliant, although I wish autosave wasn’t so reactive. It can slow up typing time.
All-in-all, it’s been money well spent.
Atticus response: You are very considerate in acknowledging you have unique book formatting requirements, which we appreciate. Atticus is template based, designed to meet the needs of the vast majority of books, but not necessarily as easy to customize for the more unique circumstances. We’ll keep working to add more options, and hopefully it will just get better for you in the future! We really appreciate your feedback and sharing with your audience, it means a lot to us.
I do need to add a huge thanks to Meryl at Atticus who showed the patience of a saint and also ensured I had the responses for this blog. There are many other companies who could learn from the excellent level of customer service.
Not Marriage Material, the anthology Sue Bavey has worked so hard to bring together, is available in both kindle and paperback versions from Amazon. Click the relevant link below to buy your copy.
It's A Stray Dog's Life also had it's third birthday on 28 February so don’t forget to join the Stray Army. Books and merchandise are available from www.maximiliansam.com.
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TTFN
MaxS and The Stray Army
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