Book writing software for writing a novel in Basque

Why Galley is the right book writing software for a novel in Basque

Basque is not related to anything around it, and software treats it as though it were. The spellcheck falls back to Spanish. The hyphenation falls back to Spanish or to nothing. The EPUB gets tagged es and a reading device is told it is holding a Spanish book, which is wrong in a way that matters for accessibility and for store metadata.

Galley carries Basque as its own language. Its own hyphenation patterns, its own eu tag, its own quote pair, and its own collation, so a cast list sorts in the Basque alphabet. Spellcheck uses your browser’s Basque dictionary if you have it installed, and nothing leaves your machine to make that work.

The second fact: Amazon lists Basque in all three formats, Kindle ebook, paperback and hardcover, so every publishing route is open. That is more than it offers Greek, Turkish or Czech.

Everything else is the same app: a true book page at your trim, the story bible beside the manuscript, a print-ready PDF and a valid EPUB.

How Basque gets typeset

Hyphenation follows Basque rules, in the justified print PDF only. Basque agglutinates, so the words run long and a justified page benefits.

Sorting is Basque, so a cast list comes out in the right order.

Italics work, and every face on the shelf carries a real italic cut.

The alphabet is undemanding, which is a relief after Latvian: ñ and the borrowed diacritics in proper nouns are the whole of it, and every face carries them.

The typefaces you get for Basque

Fifteen faces, all under the SIL Open Font License.

EB Garamond is the safe first choice for a novel.

Alegreya was drawn for literature.

Spectral was drawn for long-form reading and sets an even page.

The rest of the shelf: Crimson Pro, Cormorant, Lora, Libre Baskerville, Literata, Source Serif 4, Vollkorn, Cardo, Gentium Book Plus, Newsreader, Libre Caslon Text and Charis SIL. The typeface documentation lists every face by language.

Exports for a Basque novel

• Print-ready PDF at your trim, mirrored margins, real gutter, font embedded.
• EPUB 3 with your cover, tagged eu rather than es.
• Store-ready EPUBs for Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books.
• Word and Markdown for a zuzentzaile or an archive.
• Manuscript format, double-spaced.
• A proofreading PDF two pages to a sheet, and a large print PDF.
• A watermarked copy per beta reader.

The KDP preflight checks the file first.

Basque punctuation

Guillemets you get automatically. Basque fiction sets dialogue with a dash at the head of the line as often as it quotes, and that is a character you type.

The dialogue punctuation rules sheet covers speech across conventions.

How long a Basque novel is

Basque publishers quote length in words and printed pages, and the market is small enough that extent affects the economics directly. Galley counts words and projects a page count at your trim.

The word count to page count converter and the spine width calculator decide your printing cost between them.

Trim sizes for a Basque book

Six standards, from mass market at 4.25×6.87 inches to Royal at 6.14×9.21. Basque trade fiction is commonly issued around 14×21cm, between the Digest at 5.5×8.5 inches and Royal. The trim size comparison puts them side by side.

Metadata and the copyright page

The copyright page writes itself from the metadata you filled in. A Basque book takes a Spanish or French ISBN depending on where it is published, because the agency is national, and the language field is what tells a store what the book actually is.

Translating into or out of Basque

A translation in Galley is its own book: its own language, its own typeface shelf, its own ISBN, its own cover, still linked to the original. A Spanish edition of a Basque novel is exactly that case, and translation into Spanish is how most Basque fiction reaches a wider readership.

There are pages on writing a novel in Catalan, writing a novel in Spanish and writing a novel in Galician.

No machine touches the prose. Galley has no AI anywhere near your writing.

Self-publishing and traditional publishing in Basque

Self-publishing. Amazon takes Basque in all three formats, and the same print PDF goes to a local printer or IngramSpark.

Traditional publishing. Basque publishing has its own houses and its own institutional support, and it reads submissions directly. The submission package assembles the synopsis, the bio and the opening chapters.

The same book exports both. The longer arguments are in Galley for self-publishing and Galley for traditional publishing.

Where to go next

• Writing software for novelists who don’t write in English covers every script Galley sets.
• Book design and typefaces lists every face by language.
• Series and translations covers the full language list.
• Book typography basics is the set of rules that makes a page look made.