Book writing software for writing a novel in Norwegian

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

Norwegian is two written standards, and a tool that treats it as one is already wrong. Bokmål and Nynorsk are separate languages in Galley with separate hyphenation patterns and separate EPUB tags, so a Nynorsk book is tagged nn and hyphenated as Nynorsk rather than filed under a generic Norwegian.

Then the quotes. Norwegian fiction sets guillemets, « and », and most tools give you the English curly pair because their smart-quote rule never asked what language the book was in. Galley asks.

Then the font licence, which is the part most tools do not mention at all. Galley embeds the face inside your PDF and your EPUB, which is redistribution, so every face on the shelf is one you are allowed to 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 Norwegian gets typeset

Both standards hyphenate, on their own patterns, in the justified print PDF only. Justification is off by default.

Æ ø å go all the way through, including into the download filename.

Sorting is Norwegian, so æ ø å land after z where a Norwegian reader expects them instead of scattered through the alphabet.

Italics work, on a drawn italic in every one of the fifteen faces.

The typefaces you get for Norwegian

Fifteen faces, all under the SIL Open Font License.

EB Garamond is the safe first choice for a novel.

Literata was drawn for long-form reading and holds up on paper and screen.

Newsreader sets an even, unfussy page at body size.

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

Exports for a Norwegian novel

• Print-ready PDF at your trim, mirrored margins, real gutter, font embedded.
• EPUB 3 with your cover, tagged nb or nn as you set it.
• Store-ready EPUBs for Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books.
• Word and Markdown for a redaktør 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.

Norwegian punctuation

Guillemets you get automatically. Norwegian fiction also opens speech with a dash at the head of the line in a lot of contemporary work, and that is a character you type. Both survive into the print PDF and the EPUB.

Which standard you write in is a spelling and grammar question rather than a typesetting one, and the style sheet in the story bible is where to record the forms you have settled on. Book-wide find and replace is how you fix a drift across every chapter at once.

How long a Norwegian novel is

Norwegian publishers quote length in words and in printed sheets. Norwegian fiction sits broadly where the rest of Scandinavia does, and Norwegian runs a little longer than English at the same story length.

The word count to page count converter and novel word counts by genre do the sums.

Trim sizes for a Norwegian book

Six standards, from mass market at 4.25×6.87 inches to Royal at 6.14×9.21. Norwegian trade fiction is commonly issued around 13.5×21cm, 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 Norwegian ISBN comes from the Nasjonalbiblioteket and is free.

Norway also runs innkjøpsordningen, the state purchase scheme that buys copies of qualifying new Norwegian fiction for the libraries. It goes through a publisher, so it is one of the few places where the traditional route is worth real money that self-publishing cannot reach.

Translating into or out of Norwegian

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 Nynorsk edition of a Bokmål novel counts as one, which is exactly the case a generic tool cannot express.

There are pages on writing a novel in Danish, writing a novel in Swedish and writing a novel in Icelandic.

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

Self-publishing and traditional publishing in Norwegian

Self-publishing. Amazon takes Norwegian in all three formats. There is no Norwegian Amazon store, so the domestic route runs through the bokhandel chains and the library system, and the same print PDF and EPUB serve either.

Traditional publishing. Norwegian houses read submissions directly, and the combination of innkjøpsordningen and the Kulturrådet grants makes the traditional route worth more in Norway than in most markets. 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.
• Book typography basics is the set of rules that makes a page look made.