Atavist eBooks review

Atavist is a great all-rounder for publishing your eBook, and has a wealth of features. Beginners might feel intimidated, though.

Atavist eBooks review
(Image: © Atavist)

Top Ten Reviews Verdict

With so many eBook formats and creative functions available, this is easily one of the top eBook platforms available today.

Pros

  • +

    Excellent creative tools

  • +

    Good tutorials

Cons

  • -

    Can be quite confusing to learn

  • -

    Best features hidden behind subscription

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Atavist is one of the best ways to get your eBook published. It has myriad ways to structure digital eBooks, magazines and photobooks, giving you total control over the presentation of your story. It links up to all the main eBook publishers, and lets you send your book out in a variety of markets all over the world. Once you get to grip with all the tools it offers, this is one of the best eBook creators you can sign-up for, although it will be intimidating for newer authors.

Part of what earns Atavist such high marks for ease of use is its openness. Once you sign up for your membership, you have access to the functions right from your profile. You can impose a trial period limitation on whatever you publish on Atavist, and your content is protected by your password and user profile. However, you can still create a public page to display your works to other users and eBook buyers.

You can also brand your products as uniquely your own with a monthly membership. This will set your work apart from others and also create a similarity between your projects if you have differing formats, such as eBooks and magazines. Atavist, like eBook Maestro PRO, also has customizable page transitions, which allows you to dictate the speed and flow of your work.

Atavist can also translate your work into different languages, including the popular French, Spanish and German. There is also photo rendering, including sizing your pictures to fit the part of the page where you want them positioned, foreground or background. Each document you import onto the service goes through a checksum algorithm, which preserves your writing as is rather than turning it into an unfamiliar jumble of words, as sometimes happens in conversions. Then, when your eBook is ready, you can set it up on the Atavist website to either be sold for profit or released on a general public format.

With so many functions at your fingertips, there is a lot to learn, particularly if you are new to eBook makers. While there are several tutorials and instructional pages that help acquaint you with the service, it might take some time before you have learned everything and won't need to stop and look up how to use a feature you want to use.

In addition to simple eBooks, Atavist makes a variety of other formats available to you. The service is set up to be an outlet for all forms of written creativity, including audio and video creations, and it offers several eBook formats. You can make guides, including travel remembrances or professional-style articles about your travels with your photography displayed throughout the digital eBook. You can also use Atavist for work-related endeavors such as magazine design. There are formats on the service’s site for magazine articles and educational materials such as study guides, complete with tests. If you are more interested in family-oriented projects, such as picture books and photo albums, Atavist has the ability to make those as well.

One great advantage of the service is that it is connected to heavily used eBook sources such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble, which cater to the Kindle and Nook devices, respectively. If you want your eBook published with these services, including family-geared eBooks, you can choose to have your work there during the final publishing process. There is not a limit on what kind of format can be published to most eBook publishers, and Atavist has a system that lets you know which formats are compatible with which publishers, as well as which publishers are willing to distribute them.

Atavist supports just about any file type, and the only thing you really have to worry about is how to integrate separate files into the same project. For instance, if you have a PDF file with all of your text, then you can transport it into an eBook format easily. However, you also have the power to add graphics, audio and video into any project, which is a way to up your game on a technological level. The service provides a walk-through of how to add sound and graphic files and still make your projects look orderly.

With so many facets, Atavist would be very intimidating without the support services its founders have set up for you. One of the best ways to make yourself more comfortable with the service is to watch the tutorials. They tell you everything from where certain functions can be accessed to how eBooks should be structured.

While Atavist is an online service with an account log in, there is an app available on iTunes and the Google Store. This app contains all published works by Atavist users, and it also allows you to make certain alterations to your own eBooks. However, it does not have all of the features of the full online service, so remember that sticking with the online version is the way to get all of the tools it can offer for creating eBooks.

There is also a lot of support from the site itself. Extensive instructions and FAQs pages explain various points of Atavist's functions and capabilities. There is also an email address for customer concerns and questions. The online instruction manual is also very useful, with detailed instructions on using Atavist, and you can download it for your own records.

Should you use Atavist eBooks?

While not perfect, Atavist is one of the better eBook platforms out there thanks to a wide range of tools for both publishing and layout of your eBooks. It's tough to understand if you're new to eBook publishing, but does have a good range of tutorials available to get you started. And while the best features are only available to those who subscribe, Atavist is good value if you're serious about publishing your own work to eBook platforms. Overall, it's highly recommended.

Danny Chadwick

Danny Chadwick is a former Top Ten Reviews Multimedia Editor with a wealth of experience in Video Editing and Production. He specializes in all things multimedia editing, and his written on subjects ranging from video and audio editors right through to photo scanning and lawn mowers. There are few subjects Danny won't write about.