Galley is the book writing software for novelists where you write on the page they’ll hold.

Yes. Open the demo and you get a real, private copy of the app with a book already in it. No sign-up, no card. Write, format and run a real export for about 30 minutes, then it wipes itself. It's the actual software, not a video, so you can see how Galley works for you.

Try the demo

No. Galley costs €199 once, for a one-time licence. That includes every feature, every export format, and every future update, with no upgrade fee. Why not a subscription, like everything else? Because you can't know how many words you'd write this month. Or over the next few. Some months you write every day, some months your manuscript sits still while life happens. Charging rent on a tool you use in bursts never sat right with me. You pay once, and Galley is yours whether the book takes one year or five.

What the licence covers·The reasoning

It doesn't expire. A one-time licence is bought once and stays yours through every update, with no renewal, no expiry date, and no way to lose it by not paying again. You can also export everything you've written (print PDF, EPUB, Word, Markdown, and a full one-zip backup) at any time, so a current copy of your book lives on your own disk rather than only on my server. What no hosted app can promise is that it will run forever, so there's a commitment in the Terms for that too: if Galley ever shuts down, you get at least 6 months' notice, full exports throughout, and the code open-sourced.

The shutdown commitment, in the Terms·Taking your work with you

No, and that's deliberate. A free tier usually means you're the product (ads, upsells, or your data training someone's model), or it means a crippled version built to nag you into paying. Galley is a one-time purchase with none of that: no ad tracking, your manuscripts never sold or used to train anything, every feature included from day one. And with a no-questions-asked 14-day refund, trying it costs you nothing anyway.

Why no free tier·What we do and don’t collect

Then you get your money back. Email within 14 days of buying and I'll refund you in full, no questions asked. Writing tools are personal. If Galley doesn't fit how you work, you shouldn't be paying anything.

Refund terms

Yes! Import a .docx, .md, or .txt file and it splits into chapters on your headings and "Chapter N" lines. Most manuscripts come across in under a minute with formatting intact.

Importing a manuscript

No limit really. Books, chapters, versions, characters, locations, translations, editions. There are no per-book charges, no tiers, and nothing metered. There are some storage limits (more on that below) though.

Series, editions & translations

Not ones you should ever realistically meet (no, this is NOT a challenge, please). Manuscripts are text, so a full ten-book career uses less space than a single phone photo. Images (covers, chapter ornaments, scene-break art) are capped at 10 MB per file, which is comfortably above print resolution. Bear with me while I work on allowing more images for pages, maps and the like, which might change this answer.

Where your work is kept

No. Never. Galley's tools count, check, and format: overused words, name consistency, margins, page counts, things like that. None of them generate or rewrite prose. None of them "learn" from your prose. Every word in your manuscript is yours. I have no intention of changing this.

The no-AI position·Why it stays that way

Deleted books and chapters sit in a bin for 30 days before they are removed. Separately, every chapter keeps daily version snapshots, so even edits can be rolled back.

The 30-day bin·Version history

Two files, mainly. A print-interior PDF sized to your trim, with mirrored margins and a real gutter so the inside edge doesn't vanish into the spine, and a valid EPUB 3 with your cover and working chapter navigation. If you want to be fussier there's a tuned EPUB per store, for Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play and Nook. The copyright page and the table of contents write themselves out of what you already filled in. Then two checks before you upload: KDP preflight tells you what Amazon will reject, and delivery readiness answers the harder question of whether the book is finished as a book.

Galley for self-publishing authors·The self-publishing walkthrough

No. The output is standard: print-interior PDF and EPUB 3 work with KDP, IngramSpark, Draft2Digital, Kobo, Apple Books, or a local printer. KDP gets a bit of extra attention, with its trims and preflight checks built in, because that's where most self-publishers start.

Publishing & preflight·Every export format

Yes, done properly. Times New Roman at 12pt, double-spaced, one-inch margins, half-inch first-line indents, hash scene breaks, chapters opening a third of the way down, contact details and an approximate word count on the title page. Two versions come out of it: the full manuscript, carrying a Surname / Title / page running header for an editor about to line-edit you, and a submission package with your synopsis, bio and opening chapters in the order agents ask for them. Your book keeps its real page and its real typeface while you write. The submission copy is generated from it.

Galley for querying writers·The querying walkthrough

Share a copy makes one copy per reader, with that reader's name watermarked on every page, so if a copy turns up somewhere you know whose it was. Send it as an EPUB or a PDF they keep, or as a link that opens the book in a reader. A link takes a password and an expiry date, and you can turn it off after. Editors get a Word file, or a proofreading PDF at two pages a sheet if they're the sort who prints it and reaches for a red pen. When the edited Word document comes back, Galley imports the edits and the margin comments, each one anchored to the prose it was pointing at. Most tools import the edits and silently drop the comments, which is usually the half you paid for.

Drafts for other people·Version history

Yes, and a lot of people end up doing exactly that. It's one book either way, so there's no migration between the two paths: the manuscript export, the print PDF and the EPUB all sit in the same menu. Draft milestones let you mark and name a version, so "the draft I sent my agent" stays something you can open a year later when she finally replies and asks whether much has changed.

Who Galley is for·Draft milestones

So it's the same Galley on every computer you own (Mac, Windows, Linux) and for everyone, with nothing to install and nothing to update, and no version of me maintaining three separate builds instead of the writing tools. One caveat though: Galley needs an active internet connection to work. I'm building Offline Mode now. It's in Beta, with a few kinks left to iron out, but that is still on the browser version, and not the same as a "native" MacOS/Windows app with offline mode.

Accounts & devices·Writing offline

Nope, and that's my philosophy. Tablets work today (an iPad in landscape gets the real app). A phone version isn't built, because typesetting a paperback on a 6-inch screen is really hard to do well. Not because drafting on a phone is beneath anyone. If you write on the go, I'm keen to hear how I could make that work. Concretely, the app needs a screen at least 768 pixels wide and won't open below that, so that's worth knowing before you buy, not after. However, I understand many people DO like the feel of typing on their phones, so if enough of you really want the mobile version, I'll consider it.

Why no phone app·Devices

Sign in on up to three browsers or computers at once. Signing in on a fourth signs out the one you used longest ago. You can see and manage your devices in settings.

Managing your devices

Still being built, and the list is public. The roadmap shows what's live, what's in progress, what's in the backlog, and what has been decided against. Product updates lists every change that has shipped, by date, going back to the first version.

The roadmap·Product updates

Email, answered by me, the person who built Galley. No ticket bots, no tier-two escalations, no SLAs or cheeky upsells. I'm building Galley for my own use, so I'm really keen to make it great for you too!

The full documentation·Getting help