Inside the Ultimate Showdown: Who Will Claim the Throne of Book Building?
This Just In: I tried to format my book using Vellum and Atticus. Instead, I learned something about app design and limitations.
I’m in the final stages of editing Write Now’s second edition. I’m aiming for a mid-September launch, which means the clock is ticking. To that point, I need to finalize the formatting.
The first version was formatted by a contractor on Fiverr who did tremendous work. However, for the second edition, I want to format everything myself so that I can 1) learn the process and 2) save a little money. Reading about the process online, it seems like there are two big players: Vellum and Atticus.
Vellum is what is known as a Mac-assed Mac app. It is exclusive to the Mac, and the design is top-notch. It’s a beautiful app that makes you want to design a beautiful book. However, it is the definition of opinionated software, where you are limited to pre-selected styles that have limited customization options. Care about font choice and chapter layout? Too bad. You’ll take the choices Vellum gives you, and you’ll like it. Vellum costs $249, and you only pay when you’re ready to export your first book.
Atticus, on the other hand, is a web app, so it’s platform-independent. It is nowhere near as polished or lovely to use as Vellum, but it provides a lot more features. In particular, Atticus is connected to the Google Fonts library, so you have hundreds of choices to work with. However, while there are numerous options, seemingly rudimentary things like customizing how an image appears on the page are often impossible. Atticus costs $147 up front but comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
In the end, neither of these highly regarded typesetting tools met my needs. I ended up taking advantage of Atticus’s money-back guarantee and never paid for Vellum.
What I learned in the process is that both of these tools are primarily designed to create ePub books, which have more design limitations than physical books. ePub must look great on a variety of screens and layouts, so the format isn’t designed with aesthetics in mind.
Print books, on the other hand, are a fixed format where design absolutely matters. Each copy is identical…
