Formatting the Content of your Book
How you write your book directly affects how you format your book. While we, at Atticus, will be the first to encourage authors to take control of their books, there are a few best practices to be considered while writing that will make formatting and publishing substantially easier.
Writing in Word vs. Atticus
If you are writing your manuscript in Word, we have a separate post dedicated to helping you prepare the document itself for importing into Atticus. You can find that here: Prepare your Word Document
If you are writing directly in Atticus, you can treat it like a regular word processing program.
IMPORTANT: Pasting Content - We strongly recommend that you do not copy and paste from outside programs into Atticus. Copying from outside programs often brings hidden formatting code that causes layout issues, which will ultimately causes issues with your book.
If you must paste into Atticus:
Use CTRL/CMD + SHIFT + V
Or right-click → Paste as Plain Text
This should prevent formatting issues but you will have to go back and reapply any special formatting you may want, such as URLs, italicized or bolded text, etc.
Chapters
There’s no single “correct” chapter length. Most modern books fall between:
2,000–5,000 words per chapter
However:
Thrillers and fast-paced genres often use shorter chapters.
Literary fiction may use longer chapters.
Ultimately, chapter length should serve your story and audience.
Chapter Length in Atticus
For best performance:
Atticus handles chapters up to 7,000–8,000 words comfortably.
Longer chapters may need to be split for optimal performance.
If needed, see the tutorial on Handling Extra-Long Chapters for guidance.
Read more about Handling Extra-Long Chapters.
Images and Graphics
Depending on the type of book you’re publishing, you may want to include images.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you have your manuscript written in Word, we recommend keeping the images saved in a separate folder and importing your content only. Insert the images after importing your manuscript.
eBook vs. Print Images
One benefit of Atticus is exporting both ePub and Print from the same file. However, image-heavy books may benefit from separate versions.
eBooks
Use lower-resolution images.
Smaller file sizes load faster.
Lower delivery costs (especially under KDP’s 70% royalty structure).
Atticus automatically compresses images for optimized delivery.
Tip: Resize images appropriately before importing for best results.
Print Books
Use higher-resolution images.
Images must be sized to match your selected trim size.
Higher resolution ensures better print quality.
For more information on sizing your images, please reference Calculate Image Size for Print and eBooks.