Atticus – Writing Software · 7 January 2023
Keith Ferrin, a writer friend of mine, told me about Atticus, and now I am going to tell my readers (both real and imaginary) about it.
Atticus is a piece of writing software. You can either download it onto pretty much any computer running any operating system (OS), but even if you have some OS that it does not support, you can always just use an internet browser to get access to your writing projects. It might seem a bit pricey (~$150), but it is well worth the cost. Especially since it is not a subscription price, but a one-time buy.
(By the way, I am just writing this piece about Atticus because I like it, not because I am getting any promotional considerations. Although that would be nice.)
So what exactly does Atticus do? I am glad you asked. (I know. I asked myself. But I like the notion of call and response.)
Atticus is a formatting software. And it is a writing software as well. I have used it to start a couple books, rather book ideas, but they have not gotten anywhere yet. Which is okay. I wanted to get the ideas down and out of my head. (Which is quite a different story.) And I suppose that some people can and will use Atticus as their primary writing software. That is just not the way I use it. At least not currently.
The power of Atticus (at least in my estimation) is in its formatting. You can format a book for print on demand publishing in less than a day. Okay. Maybe a day the first time you use it. Then, you can streamline the process to get it down to a few hours or maybe even less. So far, I have been able to take thirteen of my digital books and make print-on-demand paperbacks available. It is pretty cool. Just over halfway to getting them all out there in print. (Then, hopefully the new books I write will be available in both forms right from their first release.)
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The first time I used Atticus, I was able to make my book look the way I wanted it to look in print. Oh sure, there are some quirks, but it looked pretty good. I actually uploaded it to Amazon and had it ready to go. I even ordered some author copies. Then, I figured out some changes I wanted to make. So I made the changes and uploaded again. Then, I got my print copies, but they were already out of date (and the print was too small). Ah well. Such is life. Maybe when I become famous, those copies will be worth something.
At any rate.
Like any software, Atticus is not perfect. But it makes books look good. I have not created any digital books from scratch with it yet, but I am sure it will work great for that as well.
The best thing that Atticus has helped me to do is to get the front matter and back matter done well. The front matter is the title page, the half-title page (only the title), the copyright page, the dedication page, the acknowledgements page, the about the author page, and the also by page. These pages are standard in pretty much any book, and I was able to make my own templates for all of them. That was so cool. I did not know how to do it on the first three books, but once I got them figured out, creating a book was almost as simple as uploading my file, adding all the front and back matter, and creating the print ready PDF file. Not quite that easy, but nearly so. I was amazed.
This is not really an advertising piece for Atticus, but I guess you could call it a testimonial. There is no perfect software, but Atticus is good for publishing your work. It is well worth the money if you are serious about self publishing books.
I am so glad that Keith, my writer friend, recommended Atticus to me. I hope that any writers out there have as great of an experience with it as Keith and I have had. Happy writing.
© 2023 Michael T. Miyoshi
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