Book writing software for writing a novel in Indonesian

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

Indonesian is the easiest language on this shelf to render and one of the hardest to publish from, and those are separate problems.

The rendering is easy because Indonesian uses the plain Latin alphabet with no diacritics of its own. Every one of the fifteen book faces sets it, nothing is hidden, and nothing breaks at export. What that means in practice is that your choice of face is a design decision and not a coverage decision, which is a luxury a Bengali or Lithuanian writer does not get.

The publishing is hard because Amazon does not list Indonesian in any format, and because domestic Indonesian publishing runs on relationships with houses like Gramedia rather than on a self-serve upload. So the file you make is the whole product: a print-ready PDF an Indonesian printer can work from, and a valid EPUB for Google Play, Apple Books, Kobo or a local store.

Two things Galley does not do, said plainly: there are no hyphenation patterns for Indonesian, so justify with care or set the book ragged right, and there is no Indonesian interface.

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 Indonesian gets typeset

All fifteen faces are available, because the alphabet asks nothing unusual.

There is no hyphenation. Justification is off by default and ragged right never needs it.

Sorting is Indonesian, and the prefixed and reduplicated forms sort as written, so a cast list comes out predictably.

Italics work, on a drawn italic in all fifteen faces, which matters because Indonesian uses italics for foreign and regional-language words constantly.

The typefaces you get for Indonesian

Fifteen faces, all under the SIL Open Font License. Five are recommended: EB Garamond, Crimson Pro, Cormorant, Lora and Libre Baskerville.

EB Garamond is the safe first choice for a novel.

Lora is contemporary and warm at body size.

Literata reads well small, which helps if your extent is pushing your spine.

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

Exports for an Indonesian novel

• Print-ready PDF at your trim, mirrored margins, real gutter, font embedded.
• EPUB 3 with your cover, tagged id.
• Store-ready EPUBs for Kobo and Apple Books.
• Word and Markdown for an editor 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 an Indonesian book and say why.

Indonesian punctuation

Indonesian sets speech in the curly double pair, which is what Galley types on an Indonesian book. Regional-language and foreign words are italicised by convention, and the style sheet in the story bible is where to record which words you have decided count as naturalised.

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

How long an Indonesian novel is

Indonesian publishers quote length in words and printed pages. Indonesian runs longer than English in word count for the same story because of its affixation and its function words. Galley counts words and projects a page count at your trim, 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 an Indonesian book

Six standards, from mass market at 4.25×6.87 inches to Royal at 6.14×9.21. Indonesian trade fiction is commonly issued around 13×19cm or 14×21cm, which land near the small trade at 5×8 inches and the Digest at 5.5×8.5. 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. An Indonesian ISBN comes from Perpustakaan Nasional and is issued to a publisher, which is worth knowing before you plan a domestic edition.

Translating into or out of Indonesian

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 Malay, writing a novel in Vietnamese and writing a novel in Dutch, which is a closer relative of Indonesian publishing history than it looks.

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

Self-publishing and traditional publishing in Indonesian

Self-publishing. Amazon is closed, so print goes through an Indonesian printer or IngramSpark and the ebook goes to Google Play, Apple Books, Kobo or a local store.

Traditional publishing. Indonesian publishing is concentrated in a few large houses and 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.
• EPUB vs print PDF explains what each format can do.