atticus.ioReviews of atticus.io

I have a difficult time using this software. It's very slow and it has a lot of bugs and issues and I want other people to know about that before they purchase like I did. I can't get my money back on it and try for a different program so I want others to know that this program has a lot of issues. If you don't need to write much it's fine and if you follow their guidelines it can be easy to use but do all the editing on it before you upload the chapters. Do as little editing as possible in the Atticus app. It can get very frustrating using it. I have a right to tell people that.

Atticus will NEVER replace a human artist. Book interior design and layout done by a human is a craft that will always be in a class by itself. There are so many complications of the process and features that Atticus TRIES to emulate, but the end result makes the author look like EVERY OTHER author. It offers ways to customize, yes, but only as their framework allows. So many companies attempt to replace the human touch and automate the process, but it's easy to spot a layout that's used this software. An experienced human designer will use Adobe InDesign (professional software) to design and format a book interior. Do not be swayed by their sales pitch and MAKE NO MISTAKE—if you want to STAND OUT and not look like a sheep, hire a book designer who is a real human being, a real artist. Have the guts to stand apart from the crowd.

I have been unable to export my PDF for a week no matter what I do.I can't export it in DOCX either to do a workaround for Amazon margins. Their help desk is pathetic, The concept is great but the execution awful.

TL:DR: It's excruciatingly slow, the epub files corrupt in netgalley The software is incredibly buggy. Trying to add in chapter icons, chapter titles, and chapter subtitles is so slow I thought I would lose my mind. Each action takes 5 to 10 seconds to process, which doesn't sound like a lot until you're in the middle of it. Then I would move to the next chapter only to find that the changes I just made would disappear. I wasted days trying to get it to work. After emailing their help line, they sent me to an older version that worked better. However, when I exported the epub for netgalley, it screwed up the formatting, so everyone who downloaded my book got a hot mess. I spent money on the netgalley subscription only to get negative feedback about the formatting. When I asked Atticus for a refund, they said I was past the 30-day refund window, but could I please help them troubleshoot the problem for free? Which is absolutely wild and audacious to ask me to do free labor for their benefit with nothing in return for my lost time and money. I had to get InDesign and learn a whole new program so my netgalley payment didn't end in only bad reviews, and then they want more of my labor. I suggested they pay me for my time. I'm an indie author, everything comes out of my pocket, and Atticus cost me time and money. I rather spend my time leaving a review warning other authors that this is not a prudent place to invest their money, especially if this is their response. The software does not work as advertised, which should be reason enough to refund us. Had I known ahead of time, I would have bought Vellum then used a virtual machine on windows. Instead I'm out the money I put into Atticus, and paying for another software right now is out of my budget. I'd suggest Vellum or you can find good YouTube tutorials for formatting in InDesign. The plus side of Adobe InDesign is that you can sign up for a $23 subscription then unsubscribe, but there is a greater learning curve especially if you want to add chapter icons or more advanced formatting like drop caps.

Company expects you to watch hours and hours of tutorials that are not even accurate and skip steps,tool is not intuitive at all and seems more like something for seasoned editors,support is pretty nonexistent. If you are not an experienced editor don't buy it at all. I've been for hours figuring out how to make the system understand that my uploaded doc has chapters and is not a single chapter in the whole book. Madness.

So,so, so slow. Easily 5 mins from adjusting the formatting in the writing screen to switching to formatting the check. Allow 3 - 4 days to format a book.

This software/app is totally worthless. It could be great but the number of glitches it has is incredibly frustrating. One of glitches is that it keep closing down out of nowhere and when I open it again, nothing has been saved (which is frustrating if you editing a book and have to start all over again). I wouldn't use it again even if it was free.