Book writing software for writing a novel in Hindi

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

Devanagari is a shaping script. क् plus ष does not sit side by side as two letters, it becomes क्ष, one form. Matras attach above, below, before and after the consonant they belong to, and the one that goes before is typed after. None of that is optional decoration; it is how the script works.

A browser does all of it for free, which is why so many tools look like they support Hindi. Then you export to a print PDF, which is a fixed page where the tool has to do the shaping itself, and most of them do not. They draw the glyphs in the order the characters arrived and hand you a book of broken conjuncts. Galley shapes Devanagari properly in the print PDF, with the book’s own script and direction passed through to the shaper.

The second thing is search. A naive tool strips combining marks to make search accent-insensitive, which is right for Arabic vowel marks and wrong for Devanagari, where removing a matra changes the word. Galley folds the marks that should fold and leaves the ones that should not.

The third is Amazon: KDP sells Hindi as a Kindle ebook and will not print it. No paperback, no hardcover. The print PDF still matters, because an Indian printer or IngramSpark will take it.

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 Hindi gets typeset

Conjuncts and matras are shaped, in the editor and in the print PDF.

Search keeps the matras. A word is found by what it says, not by what it looks like with the marks stripped off.

There is no italic. Devanagari has no italic convention, so the button is hidden and its shortcut unbound. Existing marks in imported text are never stripped, they just do not render as a slant.

There is no hyphenation, and justification is off by default. Ragged right is the right setting for a Hindi book.

Sorting is Hindi, so a cast list or a glossary comes out in Devanagari order.

The typefaces you get for Hindi

Two faces, both under the SIL Open Font License, which is the licence that lets Galley embed the font in a file you sell.

Noto Serif Devanagari is the reliable one, with the broadest coverage and a real bold.

Tiro Devanagari Hindi was drawn by John Hudson specifically for Hindi text setting, and it is the more literary of the two.

What you will not find here: the Linotype and Monotype Devanagari families and the commercial cuts Indian publishing houses license. Two faces is a thin shelf next to the fifteen English gets, and that is the honest state of free Devanagari book type, not a decision. The typeface documentation lists every face by language.

Exports for a Hindi novel

• Print-ready PDF at your trim, mirrored margins, real gutter, conjuncts shaped, font embedded.
• EPUB 3 with your cover, tagged hi.
• Store-ready EPUBs for Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books.
• Word and Markdown for an editor or an archive.
• Manuscript format, double-spaced, set in the book’s own face.
• A proofreading PDF two pages to a sheet, and a large print PDF.
• A watermarked copy per beta reader.

The KDP print tools switch off on a Hindi book and say why. The Kindle side stays on.

Hindi punctuation

Hindi ends a sentence with the danda ।, which is an ordinary character that survives typing, sentence counting and both exports. Sentence splitting in the app knows about it, so a Hindi book’s sentence-length chart is measuring sentences instead of guessing.

Chapter headings are still the English default on a Hindi book. Getting the Hindi convention right wants a native reader, not a guess, so the app lets you title chapters yourself. If you write in Hindi and want to tell me what it should be, say so.

How long a Hindi novel is

Hindi publishers quote length in pages and printed sheets. Galley counts your Hindi book in words, live, per chapter and per book, and projects a page count at your trim.

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

Trim sizes for a Hindi book

Six standards, from mass market at 4.25×6.87 inches to Royal at 6.14×9.21. Indian publishing commonly uses demy and royal octavo, which land near the Digest at 5.5×8.5 inches and Royal. Ask your printer before you choose. The spine width calculator and the trim size comparison would be helpful here.

Metadata and the copyright page

Every field in the app detects its own direction and script, so a Devanagari title and a Latin ISBN both come out right, and the download filename keeps the Devanagari. The copyright page writes itself from the metadata you filled in. An Indian ISBN comes from the Raja Rammohun Roy National Agency and is free.

Translating into or out of Hindi

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. An English edition of a Hindi novel, or an Urdu one, is exactly that case.

There are pages on writing a novel in Bengali, writing a novel in Urdu and writing a novel in Arabic.

No machine touches the prose. Galley has no AI anywhere near your writing, which includes not offering to translate it.

Self-publishing and traditional publishing in Hindi

Self-publishing. The Kindle store takes Hindi ebooks. For print, Amazon is closed, so the print PDF goes to an Indian printer or IngramSpark. Domestic print in India is cheap enough that a local run is often the better economics anyway.

Traditional publishing. Hindi publishing runs through established houses, and the Hindi trade is a separate world from Indian English-language publishing, with its own houses and its own advances. 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.