Book writing software for writing a novel in Catalan

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

The Catalan-specific thing to check in any tool is the punt volat, the interpunct in words like novel·la and col·legi. It is part of the spelling, not punctuation, and software that treats invisible or unusual characters as debris to be tidied on paste will eat it. Galley keeps it through typing, autosave, search, sorting and both exports, and it goes into the download filename too, so a book called Una Novel·la Curta arrives under its own name.

The quotes are the second thing. Catalan sets guillemets, « and », and English-first software gives you the curly pair because its smart-quote rule was written once for English. Galley picks the pair from the book’s language.

The third is the good news: Amazon lists Catalan in all three formats, Kindle ebook, paperback and hardcover, which is more than it offers Czech, Greek, Turkish or Russian. A Catalan self-publisher has every route open.

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 Catalan gets typeset

The interpunct is a letter here, and it is treated as one.

Hyphenation follows Catalan rules, in the justified print PDF only. Catalan hyphenation has to know not to break l·l across a line, which is exactly what language-specific patterns are for.

The accents go all the way through, both the grave and the acute, along with ç and ï.

Italics work. Every face here ships a real italic rather than a computed slope.

The typefaces you get for Catalan

Fifteen faces, all under the SIL Open Font License.

EB Garamond is the safe first choice for a novel.

Alegreya was drawn for literature and handles a diacritic-heavy line well.

Lora is contemporary, with brushed serifs that hold at small sizes.

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

Exports for a Catalan novel

• Print-ready PDF at your trim, mirrored margins, real gutter, font embedded.
• EPUB 3 with your cover, tagged ca.
• Store-ready EPUBs for Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books.
• Word and Markdown for a corrector 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.

Catalan punctuation

Guillemets you get automatically. Catalan dialogue is set with a guió at the head of the line in a lot of fiction, and that is a character you type.

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

How long a Catalan novel is

Catalan publishers quote length in words and printed pages, and Catalan fiction sits broadly where Spanish does. Galley counts words and projects a page count at your trim.

The word count to page count converter and novel word counts by genre do the sums.

Trim sizes for a Catalan book

Six standards, from mass market at 4.25×6.87 inches to Royal at 6.14×9.21. Catalan trade fiction is commonly issued around 14×21cm, between the Digest at 5.5×8.5 inches and Royal. 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 Catalan book takes a Spanish ISBN, because the agency is national, not by language.

Translating into or out of Catalan

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 Catalan novel is exactly that case, and it keeps its own quote marks, its own hyphenation and its own tag.

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

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

Self-publishing and traditional publishing in Catalan

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

Traditional publishing. Catalan publishing is a real trade with its own houses, its own prizes and its own institutional support, and it reads submissions directly and through agents. 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.