Meet Atticus, an Emerging Software for Book Production

This new browser-based software competes directly with Mac-only Vellum, which makes it an alluring option for PC users

When a manuscript is finished, polished, and ready to publish, traditional publishers typically turn to Adobe InDesign—and a professional design staff—to design and prepare the book files for print and ebook formats.

But self-publishing authors working on shoestring budgets will choose more cost-effective, DIY solutions for getting the job done. In recent years, one of the most popular tools has been Vellum, a Mac-only book layout software that carries a one-time fee of $249 to output both print and ebook files. Vellum was first launched in 2013 and over time has incorporated some slick and desirable features, like nearly automated large-print-edition formatting. The software appeals to established authors who put out multiple titles per year and don’t mind making the $249 investment for more professional-looking results. For some authors, Vellum is so desirable they switch from PC to Mac or use MacinCloud, a paid cloud service that allows you to run Mac software on your PC.

Atticus is a new book layout tool that promises to offer everything that Vellum does (and more) for both PC and Mac users. And it comes from someone already actively serving the indie author community: Dave Chesson of Kindlepreneur and Publisher Rocket. While Atticus is clearly trying to beat Vellum in the market, it’s likely to first beat out other solutions that PC users have landed upon, such as Reedsy’s cloud-based book editor (which can export print and ebook files at no cost to the author), Jutoh (paid software that’s still designed for 1995), Pressbooks (a paid WordPress-based system), and old-school Word and LibreOffice formatting. (Yes, there are still many authors who export out of word-processing software straight to printer-ready PDFs as a “good enough” solution.)

When we asked Chesson why he decided to start this venture, he told us, “My initial thought was that there were just too many authors who use a PC and thus could not use a program like Vellum to format their books.” However, he added, “I was personally tired of having to use a program like Scrivener to write, then export out of that and email back and forth with my editor in Word, only to have to re-upload my doc to Vellum to format.” At the end of the process, he’d have multiple Word files on his desktop that had the title of “Final” or “FINAL” or even “THIS IS THE FINAL.” He said, “I just wanted one software that would help me plan, outline, write, edit, collaborate, and format.” Thus, Atticus was born.

Unlike Vellum, Atticus runs as a web app. That means you use it in a browser, like Chrome or Safari, although it’s possible to download the app onto your desktop or mobile device. The advantage: wherever you are, you can access your work in the cloud. It’s not necessary to have the software installed and licensed on a particular machine; all you need is an internet connection and your login credentials. This makes collaboration with other people much easier. However, it does mean you need an active online connection to sync your work to the cloud and export it. This need to sync your work can cause some unexpected headaches that we’ll come back to later.

Should you buy it now and switch? If you already have a book-layout solution and especially if you’re happily using Vellum, the short answer is probably not. Atticus still has plenty of bugs to work out. We joined a Facebook group of authors who have been testing Atticus for months (after paying $117 for early access), where you can find discussion of work-arounds and frustrations about missing functionality. On the bright side, Atticus offers a public roadmap outlining what features they’re working on next. Still ahead: the ability to import an existing EPUB or MOBI file, a find-and-replace function, internal links, paginated previewer, large-print font options, and more. At least one beta tester was disappointed that Atticus doesn’t yet correct orphans and widows. Some authors believe it will take months before it’s truly equivalent to Vellum, but once it gets there, they predict it will race ahead of Vellum.

We took Atticus for a test drive and found it easy and intuitive to use—but we quickly hit a roadblock. Upon payment, you can immediately get to work, since it’s a browser-based system with no installation needed. You’re presented with a home screen where you can start a new project or choose an existing project.

We decided to start a new book and began by copying-and-pasting text from a PDF document. Unfortunately, this immediately resulted in a syncing error that re-appeared every few seconds and brought the editing process to a halt (see image below). The error notification included a link to a detailed help section, Troubleshooting Synching Errors. It says, “If you have copied content from another program and pasted it into Atticus, there may be hidden formatting that is interfering with Atticus’s ability to export. The best way to resolve this is to paste the content into Atticus without formatting.” Not ideal.

Our conclusion: Unless you’re importing from a clean or unobjectionable source (and/or you’re prepared to unformat), you might experience some hiccups when bringing existing work into Atticus, at least until it resolves these bugs. We did try starting another project in Atticus by copying and pasting from Word, and we experienced no syncing errors. Atticus’s support materials often say, to ensure you are incorporating every improvement or update made along the way, to do a “hard refresh” of the Atticus system if you experience trouble. That probably tells you everything you need to know about using Atticus at this early stage.

One thing beta testers agree on: the customer service is excellent. When people have trouble with Atticus, they get help and often a resolution. Chesson’s businesses are admired for integrity and transparency, so we expect this will remain a competitive advantage. Some beta testers liked the idea that Atticus’s developers are approachable and open to hearing suggestions for new features they might actually implement. (And, indeed, they have already implemented more than a few.)

As Chesson indicated above, Atticus is ultimately meant to compete against writing, editing, and collaboration tools. According to the launch plan, the development team is working on features for goal setting and tracking, outlining and plotting, ProWritingAid integration, version history, and more. This means it could take the place of tools like Microsoft Word or Google Docs. It also puts Atticus in direct competition with Reedsy’s free book-editing tools. However, the collaboration features are not likely to roll out until next year.

Bottom line: Some beta testers have successfully formatted ebooks and paperbacks with Atticus without any problems, while others are hanging onto their alternative production methods and taking a wait-and-see approach. For authors without a Mac, it may be a very easy decision to invest in Atticus either now or in the near future, given the pace of improvements. For those already invested in and happy with Vellum, it doesn’t make sense to switch—yet. We recommend joining the Atticus Hive Mind on Facebook if you decide to jump in. If you don’t like the software, Atticus offers a 30-day refund with no questions asked.