Congrats on being ready to upload your book to Atticus! We know this is an exciting next step and want to make it as smooth as possible. Below is a quick start guide for getting your Word document prepared for simple books so you can easily upload it in to Atticus.

If your book is simple without heavy formatting, then you likely only have to follow the three steps below. If your book has more complicated formatting (like links, endnotes, etc), then scroll down to the full guide below to proceed.

Step 1: Set your Chapter Titles properly. In order to ensure Atticus splits up your chapters correctly, you must:

Step 2: Delete Front Matter. If you have a Table of Contents, Title Page or Copyright Page, delete these from your manuscript as Atticus automatically builds these for you.

Step 3: Use .docx. Ensure that your book is a .docx format. Atticus currently cannot import your book unless it is .docx (Word and Google Docs) document.

Doing these three things typically ensures that your manuscript uploads correctly to Atticus. If you need additional help, or more information, we have a video below that walks you through uploading your .docx into Atticus.

If your book has more complexity to it, we recommend reading our full guide below. This includes:

Reading on will help to ensure your .docx is uploaded smoothly and correctly.

To turn the Navigation Pane, click View from the top menu, and then make sure there is a check mark beside “Navigation Pane”. This allows you to navigate within your book quickly and easily, jumping to designated chapters.
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Second, turn on the Show Formatting Marks feature. This will show you where you have paragraph breaks, page breaks, and more formatting elements used within your manuscript.

If you click Home from the top menu, you’ll see the "show or hide" paragraph marks button right beside the styles panel. Having formatting marks visible will make the next steps much easier.

Now that we understand the different settings, let’s get into the steps to preparing your manuscript for Atticus. It’s important to understand that your entire manuscript will import into the Body section of Atticus.

We know that each book is different, but following a few simple steps can help your chapters split correctly and prevent formatting hiccups from occurring.

As previously stated, Atticus automatically creates a Title Page, Copyright Page, and Contents page. Be sure to remove these pages from your Word document before importing.

If you have a dedication page, introduction, or any other front matter content, you can leave that in your Word document and simply drag and drop it into place in the Front Matter section after importing. Your chapters will be renumbered in the body section automatically.

Page Breaks are used to ensure that your chapter titles split correctly when importing your book into Atticus. To add a page break between your chapters in Word, go to "insert", select "break" and select "page break." See Image below for reference.

Setting your Chapter Titles to Heading 1 lets Atticus knows where to start a new chapter. This ensure that titles will import into the appropriate Chapter Title location.

This will also automatically include your Chapter Title in the left navigation menu of Atticus, as well as the auto-generated table of contents.

If you use the Heading 1 style, you’ll also see them show up in the Navigation pane inside Word, making it easier to navigate through your original manuscript.

If you don’t use chapter titles, a simple page break between chapters will work perfectly.

This is section is only applicable if you have the sections listed below in your book.

If you do, keep reading to learn more about how to import this into Atticus.

If you have subheadings in your book, you can apply Word default Heading 2 through Heading 6, and they will import as unique subheading formats to Atticus. Once imported, you can set the style for this subheading in your custom theme settings.

Another element you may want to make sure is properly set in your Word document before importing into Atticus is your scene breaks.

If you use three asterisks, with no spacing or any other formatting applied to them between your scenes, Atticus will automatically convert those to placeholder scene breaks when imported. This will allow you to quickly customize the break to an ornamental design element with a single click and apply this design to all scene breaks in your entire book.

Finally, if you plan on having footnotes or endnotes in your final book, you’ll want to set those up in Word as Footnotes. Atticus will import them easily, and you can add your preferences in your theme settings.

If you’ve already set up your notes in Word as endnotes, unfortunately, they won’t translate over to Atticus.

It’s super easy to convert them to footnotes, though.

If you have images in your book, we recommend saving them separately and importing your manuscript without images. Depending on how many images you have in your book, and how large the final file is, it may be timing out the import process before the images can fully make it into the program.

Once the manuscript itself is uploaded into Atticus, you can insert the images exactly where you want them.

If you have links in your .docx, we recommend adding them into your book after it has been uploaded. This is because sometimes the formatting of links from other programs doesn't import well into Atticus and can cause them to not format correctly.

Beyond these simple formatting settings, it doesn’t matter too much how your manuscript is set in Word. You’ll be able to set your font styles, paragraph settings, line spacing, and much more within Atticus.

Just so you don't forget anything, we've made you a downloadable checklist for your book. This helps ensure you're not missing anything from your book before uploading into Atticus.
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Click here to download: Checklist Before You Import to Atticus.png

If you’ve gone through this tutorial and are having trouble getting your manuscript to import into Atticus, here are a few extra steps to check:

Next Steps

Now that you're done importing, it's time to write and format your book! To learn more be sure to check out our videos and training on our tutorials page.

Here are a few helpful links to Articles that will help your formatting in Atticus: