Laying it all out…

Book Formatting Software

I put off having all but one of my five romance books in print until now, and that one, my publisher, did. I had a reason; getting a book into digital form is one thing, but having one look good in printed form and distributed is another.

I have much respect for book formatters. Typography, layout, and graphic design are a whole field that you can spend years studying. You can totally screw up your reader if you don't get this part right. Up to now, I've stuck to ebooks because I’ve believed romance readers prefer ebooks to paperbacks for the following reasons:

• They are voracious readers, and a Kindle can hold thousands of books.

• Romance readers don't want to be judged by what they are reading and the cover is hidden.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you think romance readers prefer ebooks? Do you offer print books?

I've spent my dollars in other ways, putting it into audiobooks. However, I've decided to offer printed books for my Devil Chronicle series this year because 32% of readers will still only read printed books.

I've fooled around with both Draft2Digital's Platform and Kindle Create for my ebooks. I prefer Kindle Create for digital book creation, but when it came time to release my book in print form, if I wanted to do this myself, I wanted more choice with the aesthetics.

After reading reviews of various platforms and software programs, it came down to Vellum and Atticus. Some free ones are available, but I need support when something doesn't work. Atticus didn’t seem to offer a try it before you buy it, but Vellum allowed a seven-day trial.

Atticus is affordable, lifetime $149.00. It is designed to be both a writing and formatting tool for your book (ebook and in print). Vellum is more expensive, $249.00 (for both the ebook and print version), and is designed for formatting only. Vellum also offered an ebook version only at a cheaper price.

Atticus doesn't need to be downloaded to use, which I liked. This means you can use it from anywhere. It's in the cloud, and your books are saved there. You can also download the program if you wish. I used the program from the cloud.

Vellum is a downloadable program. As would be expected I experienced a problem. After downloading it, I couldn't save it to my device without a password from them, and I didn't understand that I had to hit a restore button within the program. Eventually, after figuring this out, it was smooth sailing. I was able to get this working on both of my computers.

Based on attractiveness, Vellum wins my vote. It’s immaculate and minimalistic design is stunning but it does mean you must hunt more to find things until you get familiar with the platform.

What they both could have done better was bring in my existing book. They misread some of the scenes as chapters, forcing me to copy and paste the chapters in and reorganize them. However, since they both failed, they would probably say it was my fault. Since the book was successfully uploaded to Kindle Create with no problem, I’m going to hold my ground and say if Kindle, a free program was able to do it, they should also be able to do it.

I also had a date heading in several chapters that got treated as a drop cap by both platforms. I didn't like the looks of that, so I went in and selected a block quotation, which took care of the situation.

Both platforms offered a multitude of good-looking manuscript choices. Atticus had seventeen. Vellum, eight, but eight knock-out gorgeous ones. If you are writing something modern, you'll find some great options, or if you're a historical buff, they had that, too.

Atticus is easier to use from the get-go. There is an easy-to-find button at the top of the menu bar to switch from writing and editing to formatting. Atticus could be better-looking, it’s true, but it's practical…like an old bathrobe one might wear; not especially pretty, but warm. Everything you use all the time is right there; while Vellum is like driving a Tesla, they've hidden many things, under the scene break symbol *. I'm sure you get used to finding things eventually.

Where Vellum excels is in the support part. There’s oodles of information here on how to side-load your book to view it on your Kindle device without paying for it and uploading it to various stores (as each store has different file limits). Again, Vellum spells all this out and reduces images for you in your ebook. They even provide specific information for uploading your print version to KDP, including error messages you might experience and what to do about them.

All the manuscript choices are pre-set on both platforms regarding margins, justification, etc., which is helpful. On Atticus, you can see what the type size is, even on your ebook version, but on Vellum, when selecting ebook version that was not possible. It just appears as either small or large type, although you can change between the two. They know the reader can change it on their device when they read. If you are working on your book to make a print version on Vellum, you see the type's point size and can alter it.

What I wish both platforms would tackle is the cover. Many authors only purchase an ebook cover. What would be so hard about including something that could sample the colors and texture of your cover, create the back of your cover, and allow you to add type (description, and blurb)? Since we have access to the Kindle Print Cover Calculator, we could handle the entire creation of the inside and outside of our book in one program.

In the end I believe it will come down to how effective each platform is in allowing me to submit what I create for print to Amazon and other distributors. So, I will make a print book with each platform, and let you know how it goes in a few weeks.

Have a great week!