To access the Formatting Tab, you’ll first need to select one of your books from your Home Dashboard. Clicking on a book will bring you into the Writing Tab by default. From here, you can switch to the Formatting Tab at any time using the top menu bar.
This is where your book’s design comes to life.
When you open the Formatting Tab, you’ll land in the Theme Gallery to the left. Think of themes as the master style guide for your entire book. A theme controls how everything looks, including fonts, font size, line spacing, margins, trim size, and more.
Atticus provides professionally designed preset themes that you can use right away. To apply one, just click on the theme tile, and it will instantly update your book’s formatting as you see here within the previewer. You can easily switch back and forth between themes to get a better idea of what you like best.
Example: Theme "Hughes"
Example: Theme "Dolphini"
If you’d rather build something custom, you can also create a new theme from scratch and tailor every detail to match your vision. It’s important to remember that if you choose to come back and edit one of your custom themes, these changes will affect all the books you have set to this theme within Atticus. So, ensure to ‘save as new theme’ if you decide to make changes that are just to be applied here.
Previewer & Exporting
On the right-hand side, you can switch between different formats and see a live preview of your manuscript and any changes you have made to formatting. These will give you a good representation of your book in print or on various devices.
When it comes to ePubs, every device, depending on the generation and individual settings, will appear slightly different. So, it’s not exactly possible to show a perfect representation every time, but it will be very close. For a more accurate view of your ePub, we always recommend proofing your final ePub within Kindle Previewer.
When you are ready to export, you can choose to export your book as a PDF or ePub by selecting the options below the Previewer here.
Managing your themes.
If you click the three dots next to any theme name, you’ll see additional options here to edit these themes. From here, you can:
Edit the theme to fine-tune its settings
Rename it to keep things organized.
Duplicate it to experiment without affecting the original.
Or delete custom themes you no longer need
By duplicating a theme, you’ll find it especially useful if you love a layout but want to tweak it for a different project. When duplicated, the new theme will appear in your list with “copy” added to the name.
You can also mark themes as favorites by clicking the heart icon in the bottom-right corner of the theme preview. Favorite themes move to the top of your Theme Gallery, giving you quick access to the styles you use most often.
As themes are universal, just remember that you do have the ability to apply the same formatting to multiple books. This is perfect for series, collections, or authors who want a consistent look across all their titles, saving time and ensuring a cohesive brand.
From within your Theme Settings, you have the power to shape the visual identity of your book. So, let’s take a deeper look at all the parts you can customize to create the ideal theme for your book. This is where the magic happens.
Chapter Heading
The Chapter Heading section of your theme in Atticus allows you to customize how the heading area of each chapter is presented in your book. Check the box next to any element you would like to be visible in the header. When the box is checked, you’ll see additional formatting options that you can adjust.
For chapter numbers, titles, and subtitles, you can also choose the:
Font
Alignment
Text Size
Text Style
And the Width
Within the font options for your chapter heading, you’ll have over 1500 different font choices. By clicking into the Google fonts, you can scroll through all of what Atticus currently has available and favorite what you prefer to use in your manuscript. For the number, you can also select from a variety of options depending on what you like best.
For Chapter images, you have a lot of customization options available that allow you to choose whether you want the same image on every chapter or maybe you've uploaded unique ones for each. With these images, you can now choose the placement.
Paragraph
This enables you to customize the formatting of your paragraphs for eBook and Print. You can choose decorative options for the first sentence in a chapter or scene, and also select the general paragraph format.
First Sentence Formatting
Within the first sentence formatting, Atticus will always force the first sentence of each chapter, the first sentence after a scene break, and the first sentence after a subheading to be non-indented to follow industry standards.
You can also add customization styles like Drop Caps or Lead in Small Caps to the first sentence, and decide whether to apply these to the beginning of a chapter or to every paragraph after a break.
For your subsequent paragraphs, general typography rules advise against using both indented and spaced formatting simultaneously. So, Atticus makes that easy for you and allows you to pick which you prefer best and know it’s consistent throughout your entire manuscript.
Subheadings
Subheadings are a powerful tool for organizing and enhancing the readability of your writing. Whether you're crafting non-fiction documents or weaving a narrative in fiction, subheadings can provide structure and guide your readers through the text.
When importing a document from Word, Atticus automatically recognizes default Word styles heading one through heading six, which Heading 1 automatically imports as your chapter title.
By default, Atticus uses the Body Font for headings until you modify the Subheading font and size directly in your theme. Subheadings in Atticus will always be slightly bolded with extra padding above and below the text.
To adjust the default font sizes for each heading level, simply just drag the scale up or down until you see it’s the size you like best.
Scene Breaks
Scene breaks can be essential for creating structure and readability in your book. They signal to the reader that you're moving to a different part of the narrative or maybe have something important you want the reader to be aware of.
When selecting your overall layout, you have three options. The first is a scene break with an image. This is a decorative image inserted between the scenes, and indentation is suppressed on the following paragraph. If Apply First Sentence Formatting after every break is selected under Paragraph settings in your theme, drop caps or small caps will also be applied to the following paragraph.
The next option is a Scene break without an image: A space is left between the scenes, and indentation is suppressed on the following paragraph. If Apply First Sentence Formatting after every break is selected under Paragraph settings in your theme, drop caps or small caps will also be applied to the following paragraph.
And lastly, you have the option to choose No visible scene break: There will be no visible indication that a scene break was used in the formatted text.
This option can be used to break up chapters and work in smaller scenes, without those breaks being visible in the final book.
No matter which option you choose, Atticus gives you the flexibility to choose something that can add a little extra uniqueness to your book.
Notes
Within the Notes section, you’ll notice that there are options for your PDF or Epub directly. It’s important to note that an EPUB is a reflowable document, so there won’t be specific pages to apply a ‘Footnote’’ placement. These will only be available within a PDF document where individual pages are created. You can choose to fine-tune your formatting of these by using the slider to adjust the size of the text in your footnotes or endnotes.
Print Layout
In Atticus, the Print Layout section provides you with essential customization options for your printed book. Here you can adjust the width of inner and outer margins, the depth of indents, turn justification and hyphenation on or off, and select your Keep Options and Layout Priority.
Margins refer to the blank space around the edges of each page in your printed book. Adjusting margins can impact the overall aesthetics and readability of your book.
Indents determine the space between the text and the edge of the page. They are commonly used to create a visually appealing layout by controlling the beginning of paragraphs.
Justification & Hyphens- Justification determines whether your text is adjusted to align evenly along both margins. Hyphenation involves breaking a word across lines with a hyphen. This can affect the appearance of your text and is customizable in Atticus.
Layout Priority allows you to prioritize removal of Widows and Orphans, balancing the pages, or both. Books with large imagery might find it best to use the ‘Best of Both’ option to help avoid imagery ending up on strange pages or exporting concerns.
Keep Options allow you to control whether elements, like Subheadings or Scene breaks, should be kept with the following paragraph.
Typography
Typography refers to the general text settings in your print book. Under the Typography section of your theme settings, you can adjust the Body Font, Font Size, and Line Spacing for your PDF.
Note: For eBooks, it's important to be aware that readers control fonts, text size, and line spacing on their devices and apps. Typography theme settings won't impact the ePub version, as these preferences are managed by the readers themselves.
Fonts
All the fonts provided by Atticus are not only free to use but are also licensed for both non-commercial and commercial purposes through open source licensing. This ensures that your document maintains consistent and accurate formatting across major printers.
At this time, Atticus does not allow authors to import fonts into our platform. We want to ensure that both our authors and the creators of fonts are fully protected before we allow for importing fonts. While we aim to include the option to import user fonts in the future, it may take some time to address these complexities.
When it comes to your font size, the default settings will adhere to industry standards, but you can make adjustments as you prefer for your book.
Typically, many genres aim for a body text size in the range of 10–12 points for optimal readability in print. While those who may be writing a children’s book might consider something a bit larger, like 16-18 font size.
It’s important to consider the variations in font design, as some fonts may appear slightly different in size even though they are considered the same size. So, trust your visual judgment; set a block of text at the same point size to compare font lengths and see what you think looks best.
Header/Footer
Running headers and footers are the text that appears in the top and bottom margins of each page to help with navigation through the document. They typically include information such as Page Numbers, the book's title, your author name, and/or the chapter title.
Atticus will automatically add these details based on the information provided in your Book Details and chapters.
So, you can also choose the layout that you feel fits best and see exactly how it will appear within your printed pages. And with the Header and Footer scales here, you can adjust the font size directly.
Trim Size
Within Atticus, you can choose from some of the most common trim sizes in your theme settings under Trim Size.
Atticus provides a color-coding system to help you choose a trim size compatible with your preferred publisher, such as Amazon's KDP or IngramSpark. These trim sizes are also widely accepted by most major printers.
At this time, Atticus does not support custom trim sizes, but this is something that will likely be doable in the future.