Write on the page they'll hold. Galley is a book writing software for novelists.

Write your manuscript, then export a print-ready paperback, an ebook, or a submission package for agents, all from one place.

Or launch a demo now. No signup. No credit card

Runs in the browser on macOSWindowsLinuxChromebook

Why Galley exists

I got tired of hacking five tools together when none worked.

Moving my manuscript between a writing app, a drafting app and a formatting app never worked for me. So I built one that gave me the results I wanted.

Curious? Explore all the features, read the documentation, or see how Galley compares to other tools like Word, Scrivener, Atticus, and Vellum.

The editor

A real book from the very first moment

Pick a trim size and a typeface, and write on that page from the very beginning. Typewriter scroll keeps your writing at eye-level, and the page stays light or dark to match your preference.

More on the writing room
Real trim sizes 6×9 US Trade, UK B-format, mass market, Royal. 35 fonts across 9 scripts Licensed for commercial publishing in multiple languages. Focus mode One click to remove all distractions from the editor. Saves automatically As you type, with daily snapshots too. Save manually if you prefer as well.
The story bible

Never lose the context to your prose

Characters with aliases. Locations. World notes, and a style sheet for your own rules. All of it easily accessible in the same tool.

More on the story bible
Useful shortcuts Type @ to add a character or # for a location. Linear timelines Tie events to chapters and people to stay on track. On-page highlights Notes, references, glossary items, and tags glow as you type. No research hunting Store snippets of research within Galley itself.
Revision

Find your mistakes

40,000 words in you're sure to have made an error somewhere. Galley helps you run the checks your tired eyes can't.

More on revision
Overused words Your fillers counted per thousand, with peaks shown by chapter. Name consistency Mark called her Jeanie forty-one times, but Jeany once? Found. Pacing Every chapter's length shows up in one chart beside the book. Draft, revised, final Move a chapter along stages with one click.
Exports & the toolkit

Everything you need after your last sentence.

One menu holds the entire back half of self-publishing, the part that usually costs you a few weeks or a few freelancers.

Book previews Flip the print PDF, or reflow on a simulated e-reader. Print-ready PDF Mirrored margins, true gutter, sized to your trim. EPUB 3 With your cover, optimized for Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, anywhere. Word & Markdown For editors, archives, and particular collaborators. Proofreading PDF Two pages per sheet, for your aggressive red pen. Share a copy A file or a link per reader, with their name watermarked. Submission package Synopsis, bio, and first chapters in standard manuscript format. KDP preflight Trim, margins, metadata, and page count checks. Overused words Your filler words counted per thousand, located by chapter. Name consistency Find misspelled characters across the book. Backups Download the whole book and its bible as one zip.

The exported files are standard print-interior PDF, EPUB 3, .docx and Markdown, so they work at KDP, IngramSpark, Draft2Digital, Kobo, Apple Books, a local print shop, or in your agent's inbox, and KDP preflight checks them before you upload to Kindle.

More on making the book
Features

All the bells. No whistles.

Galley is not for everyone. All features are particularly considered and built for novelists.

True book pages Focus mode Chapters & parts Characters Read-through Writing goals Book preview Series No AI on your words 35 book typefaces Typewriter scroll Prologue & epilogue Cast overview Book-wide find & replace Accent themes Print-ready PDF Editions & translations Autosave Chapter openings Light & dark paper Chapter stages Locations Overused words The dashboard EPUB 3 Side-by-side view Version history Scene breaks

60+ features

Explore the full inventory of what features you'll find in Galley.

See all features

New to all of this? Start with your first book, or look a word up in the publishing glossary.

What I said no to

Things you won't find in Galley

Galley is highly opinionated because every piece of software is shaped by its refusals. That is why Galley can be simple and extremely deep at once. Learn more about this on the philosophy page.

No AI touches your prose. Ever.

All your work is yours. No AI touches your prose in any way. Nothing is trained on it. Nothing learns from it. And nothing suggests or generates prose for you. The tools that count, check, and typeset your work do not use AI.

Learn about our no-AI philosophy

No phone app

On purpose (arguable). Novels usually get written with some elbow room. A quiet desk, a dark room, a stormy cabin, maybe some whiskey, and a lot of thinking.

Screens & devices

No theme libraries

Novel interiors follow "boring" conventions that readers never notice but always feel. Galley sets them correctly instead of offering 400 custom ways to get them wrong.

Conventions

No monthly subscription

Your words don’t arrive on a monthly schedule, so the bill shouldn’t either. Charging rent on a tool you use in bursts just felt... wrong.

What the one-time licence is

No "everything"-app

Galley is not for screenwriters, not for bloggers, not for teams, not for coffee-table books. Galley is for novelists. The depth goes where the focus is.

Who Galley is for
What it costs

One price for a one-time licence.

No monthly subscription. Because some months, you write. Other months, life happens.

Private Beta · Launching soon

€199once, when it's ready

Galley isn't on sale yet. You can open it and write in it today, with nothing to pay and nothing to sign up for.

  • Every feature and every export format
  • All future updates, no upgrade fees
  • Unlimited books, chapters, and versions
  • Use on up to 3 devices at a time
  • Full backup export anytime, no lock-in
  • For desks, laptops, and iPads in landscape. There is no phone app
Launch Galley

Nothing to pay or sign up for. Your manuscripts are never used to train anything and can be exported in full at any time. The licence terms and the privacy policy say it in writing.

Join Waitlist

Know when Galley is live

Leave your email address and I'll email you the day Galley launches.

Galley is currently in Private Beta. Join the waitlist to get early access, or be notified at launch.

What Galley replaces

A novel usually gets written across multiple tools, with your manuscript exported between them every time something changes.

Before you ask

Questions

Buying & licence

Can I try it before buying?

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

Try the demo

Is there a subscription?

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 coversThe reasoning

How long is my licence valid, and what if Galley shuts down?

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 honestly 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 TermsTaking your work with you

Is there a free tier?

No, and that's deliberate. A free tier usually means you're the product (ads, upsells, or your data quietly training some learning model somewhere), 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 tierWhat we do and don’t collect

What if I buy it and it’s not for me?

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

Your book

I have a manuscript in Word. Can I bring it over?

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

How many books can I have?

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

Are there storage limits?

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

Does AI write or edit my book?

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 positionWhy it stays that way

What happens if I delete something by accident?

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 binVersion history

Publishing & submitting

I’m self-publishing. What do I actually get at the end?

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 authorsThe self-publishing walkthrough

Is it only for Amazon KDP?

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 & preflightEvery export format

I’m querying agents. Does it do standard manuscript format?

Yes, and it's the real convention rather than an approximation of it. 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 writersThe querying walkthrough

How do I get drafts to beta readers and my editor?

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 peopleVersion history

Can I do both, query agents and self-publish?

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 forDraft milestones

Devices & access

Why is it a web app and not a desktop app?

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 & devicesWriting offline

Is there a phone app?

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 genuinely 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 appDevices

How does the 3-device limit work?

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

Support & what’s next

Is Galley finished, or still being built?

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 roadmapProduct updates

What does support look like?

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 documentationGetting help

Your next book
deserves a better tool.

Launch Galley

Opens straight into a book. Nothing to install, nothing to sign up for.