Book writing software for writing a novel in Galician

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

The thing that happens to Galician in most software is that it becomes Spanish. The spellcheck is Spanish, the hyphenation is Spanish, the EPUB gets tagged es, and a reader’s device is told it is holding a Spanish book. Every one of those is a small wrong that nobody notices until an accessibility check or a store’s metadata pass catches it.

Galley carries Galician as its own language. Its own hyphenation patterns, its own gl tag in the EPUB, its own quote pair, and its own collation for a cast list. Spellcheck runs against your browser’s Galician dictionary if you have it installed, and nothing is uploaded to make that happen.

The second useful fact: Amazon lists Galician in all three formats, Kindle ebook, paperback and hardcover. Every publishing route is 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 Galician gets typeset

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

The diacritics go all the way through, including into the download filename.

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

Italics work. The italic in each of these faces was drawn, not computed.

The typefaces you get for Galician

Fifteen faces, all under the SIL Open Font License.

EB Garamond is the safe first choice for a novel.

Alegreya was drawn for literature.

Newsreader sets an even, unfussy page at body size.

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

Exports for a Galician novel

• Print-ready PDF at your trim, mirrored margins, real gutter, font embedded.
• EPUB 3 with your cover, tagged gl rather than es.
• 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.

Galician punctuation

Guillemets you get automatically. Galician dialogue is set with a raia at the head of the line in most 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 Galician novel is

Galician publishers quote length in words and printed pages. Galley counts words and projects a page count at your trim, which is the number the printer works from.

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

Trim sizes for a Galician book

Six standards, from mass market at 4.25×6.87 inches to Royal at 6.14×9.21. Galician 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 Galician book takes a Spanish ISBN, because the agency is national, not by language, and the book’s own language field is what tells a store and a reading device what it actually is.

Translating into or out of Galician

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 or Portuguese edition of a Galician novel is exactly that case.

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

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

Traditional publishing. Galician 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.
• From manuscript to published book is the whole route.