Book writing software for writing a novel in Finnish

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

Finnish is agglutinative, so it builds words no other language on this shelf builds, and a justified Finnish line with no hyphenation is a row of holes. Hyphenation stops being a refinement and becomes the setting that decides whether the page looks like a printed book. Galley carries Finnish patterns and applies them in the print PDF when you justify. If you set ragged right, which plenty of contemporary Finnish fiction does, the question never arises.

The quotes are the second thing. Finnish sets a right-facing double mark at both ends, and English-first software gives you the open-and-close pair because its smart-quote rule was written once and never asked what language the book was in. Galley asks.

The third is the licence on the type. Galley embeds the face inside your PDF and your EPUB, which is redistribution, so every face on the shelf is one 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 Finnish gets typeset

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

Ä and ö go all the way through, including into the download filename.

Sorting is Finnish, so ä and ö land after z where a Finnish reader expects them.

Italics work. All fifteen faces ship a drawn italic.

The typefaces you get for Finnish

Fifteen faces, all under the SIL Open Font License.

EB Garamond is the safe first choice for a novel.

Literata reads well at small sizes, which matters when the words are long and the measure is fixed.

Gentium Book Plus has unusually wide diacritic coverage and sets a calm page.

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

Exports for a Finnish novel

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

Finnish punctuation

The quote pair you get automatically. Finnish fiction also opens speech with a dash at the head of the line, which is a character you type and which survives into both exports.

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

How long a Finnish novel is

Finnish publishers quote length in liuska, in characters and in printed sheets. Finnish is compact in word count and long in characters, because one Finnish word carries what English spreads over four, so a Finnish manuscript can look short by word count and set to the same page count as an English one. Galley counts words and shows the page count projection, which is the number that decides your spine.

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

Trim sizes for a Finnish book

Six standards, from mass market at 4.25×6.87 inches to Royal at 6.14×9.21. Finnish trade fiction is commonly issued around 13×20cm, which sits 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 Finnish ISBN comes from the Kansalliskirjasto and is free.

Translating into or out of Finnish

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 Swedish, writing a novel in Estonian and writing a novel in Norwegian.

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

Self-publishing and traditional publishing in Finnish

Self-publishing. Amazon takes Finnish in all three formats. There is no Finnish Amazon store, so domestic reach runs through the bookshops and the libraries, and the same print PDF and EPUB serve either.

Traditional publishing. Finnish houses read submissions directly, and the grant system through Taike and the Finnish Cultural Foundation is a real part of how literary fiction gets written. 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.
• Choosing a trim size is the longer argument on format.