Book writing software for writing a novel in Czech

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

The first thing to know about publishing a Czech novel is that Amazon is not part of it. KDP does not list Czech in any format, not as a Kindle ebook, not as a paperback, not as a hardcover. So the file you end up with is the whole product, and its quality is not something you can outsource to a store’s converter later.

That is why Galley’s shape suits Czech. The print-ready PDF is the finished interior a Czech printer can work from, with your trim, mirrored margins and a real gutter, and the font embedded. The EPUB is valid and store-agnostic, which is what Palmknihy, Kosmas, Google Play, Apple Books and Kobo all want.

The typesetting is the ordinary part done properly. Czech quotes „low, then high“, and English-first tools give you the curly pair because their smart-quote rule never asked what language the book was in. Czech needs hyphenation in a justified line. And most tools embed a font you are not licensed to sell. Galley picks the quote pair from the language, carries Czech patterns, and ships only faces you may sell the book with.

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 Czech gets typeset

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

The diacritics go all the way through. Ě š č ř ž ý á í é ú ů ď ť ň survive typing, autosave, search, sorting, both exports and the download filename, so a book called Tiché Hodiny arrives under its own name.

Sorting is Czech, which matters because č, ř, š and ž each sort as their own letter and a cast list sorted the English way scatters them.

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

The typefaces you get for Czech

Fifteen faces, all under the SIL Open Font License. The háček is what to check in a face, because a shallow one either lacks it or sets it as an afterthought sitting on top of the letter.

EB Garamond is the safe first choice for a novel.

Charis SIL and Gentium Book Plus both come out of SIL, which builds for diacritic-heavy scripts by default.

The rest of the shelf: Crimson Pro, Cormorant, Lora, Libre Baskerville, Literata, Source Serif 4, Spectral, Alegreya, Vollkorn, Cardo, Newsreader and Libre Caslon Text.

What you will not find here: Preissig’s types and the commercial cuts of Týfa and Menhart, which are the faces Czech book printing was built on. The typeface documentation lists every face by language.

Exports for a Czech novel

• Print-ready PDF at your trim, mirrored margins, real gutter, font embedded.
• EPUB 3 with your cover, tagged cs.
• Store-ready EPUBs for Kobo and Apple Books.
• Word and Markdown for a redaktor 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 Czech book and say why. Nothing else does.

Czech punctuation

The quote pair you get automatically. Czech dialogue is set with a dash at the head of the line in a lot of fiction, and that is a character you type.

The Czech habit worth keeping is the non-breaking space after a one-letter preposition, so a line never ends on k, s, v or z. Galley does not insert them, and they survive into the print PDF once you do; the editor’s Invisibles toggle shows where they are.

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

How long a Czech novel is

Czech publishing counts in autorské archy. One arch is 36,000 characters including spaces, and a manuscript is quoted in archy when a nakladatelství asks. Galley counts words, so expect to convert: Czech runs roughly 6.5 characters per word with spaces, which puts an 85,000 word novel near 15 archy.

The word count to page count converter turns a length into a page count at your trim.

Trim sizes for a Czech book

Six standards, from mass market at 4.25×6.87 inches to Royal at 6.14×9.21. Czech 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 Czech ISBN comes from the Národní knihovna and is free.

Translating into or out of Czech

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 Slovak, writing a novel in Polish and writing a novel in Hungarian.

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

Self-publishing and traditional publishing in Czech

Self-publishing. Amazon is closed to you, so the route is a Czech printer or IngramSpark for print, and Palmknihy, Kosmas, Google Play, Apple Books or Kobo for the ebook. All of them take a standard print PDF and a standard EPUB, which is what Galley makes.

Traditional publishing. Czech 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.
• EPUB vs print PDF explains what each format can do.