Book writing software for writing a novel in Bulgarian

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

Bulgarian is the language that proves keying typography to the script is wrong.

Cyrillic is not one convention. Russian and Ukrainian quote in guillemets. Bulgarian and Serbian quote „low, then high“. Software that decides your quote marks from the alphabet gets half of Cyrillic wrong by construction, and until recently that included this one. Galley now keys the rule to the book’s language, so a Bulgarian book gets „ and “ as you type and a Russian book in the same account gets « and ».

The second thing is the shelf. Five of the fifteen Latin book faces cannot render a word of Bulgarian, and the filter hides them on a Bulgarian book rather than letting you pick one and find out at export.

The third is Amazon, and it is a closed door: KDP does not list Bulgarian in any format. Not ebook, not paperback, not hardcover. So the print PDF and the EPUB are the whole product, and Galley makes both without shaping either for a store that will not take them.

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 Bulgarian gets typeset

Cyrillic italic is a different alphabet, not a slope, and all ten faces on the shelf carry a drawn one.

Hyphenation follows Bulgarian rules, in the justified print PDF only.

Sorting is Bulgarian, so a cast list comes out in the Bulgarian alphabet.

The upright letterforms are the honest gap. Bulgarian Cyrillic has its own upright shapes for в, г, д, и, п, ц and ш, closer to the italic forms than to the Russian upright ones, and a Bulgarian reader notices when a book is set in the Russian shapes. No free book face ships them, so every face on this shelf sets the Russian forms. That is a real limitation and it is named here rather than left for you to find.

The typefaces you get for Bulgarian

Ten of the fifteen book faces carry a full Cyrillic alphabet: Alegreya, Charis SIL, Cormorant, EB Garamond, Gentium Book Plus, Literata, Lora, Source Serif 4, Spectral and Vollkorn. All under the SIL Open Font License, which is the licence that lets Galley embed the font in a file you sell.

EB Garamond is the safe first choice for a novel.

Literata reads well at small sizes and sets an even page.

Vollkorn is warmer and a little heavier.

The typeface documentation lists every face by language.

Exports for a Bulgarian novel

• Print-ready PDF at your trim, mirrored margins, real gutter, font embedded.
• EPUB 3 with your cover, tagged bg.
• Store-ready EPUBs for Kobo and Apple Books.
• Word and Markdown for a редактор 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 Amazon-shaped tools switch off on a Bulgarian book and say why.

Bulgarian punctuation

The quote pair you get automatically. Bulgarian dialogue is set with a dash at the head of the line, which is a character you type and which comes through both exports unchanged.

The dialogue punctuation rules and dashes, hyphens and ellipses sheets cover the general cases.

How long a Bulgarian novel is

Bulgarian publishing quotes length in печатни коли, one кола being sixteen printed pages, and in characters. Galley counts words and projects a page count at your trim, which is the number that decides how many коли you have.

The word count to page count converter should be a helpful resource for you.

Trim sizes for a Bulgarian book

Six standards, from mass market at 4.25×6.87 inches to Royal at 6.14×9.21. Bulgarian trade fiction is commonly issued around 13×20cm, close to the Digest at 5.5×8.5 inches.

The spine width calculator and the trim size comparison would be helpful here.

Metadata and the copyright page

The copyright page writes itself from the metadata you filled in. A Bulgarian ISBN comes from the national library in Sofia.

Translating into or out of Bulgarian

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, with the editor split so the original sits read-only beside what you write.

There are pages on writing a novel in Russian, writing a novel in Serbian and writing a novel in Ukrainian.

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

Self-publishing and traditional publishing in Bulgarian

Self-publishing. Amazon is closed, so print goes through a Bulgarian printer or IngramSpark, and the ebook goes to Google Play, Apple Books, Kobo or a Bulgarian store. All of them take a standard print PDF and a standard EPUB.

Traditional publishing. Bulgarian houses read 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.