Book writing software for writing a novel in Slovak

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

Slovak has the same publishing shape as Czech and a smaller market, and the fact that decides everything is the same: Amazon does not publish in Slovak in any format. No Kindle store, no paperback, no hardcover. The file you make is the whole product.

So the file has to be right. Galley’s print-ready PDF is a finished interior at your trim, with mirrored margins, a real gutter and the font embedded, which is what a Slovak printer wants. The EPUB is valid and belongs to no particular store, which is what everything except Amazon wants.

The typesetting is where most tools fall over on Slovak. The quote pair is „low, then high“ and English-first software gives you the curly one. Slovak needs hyphenation in a justified line. And ľ, ĺ, ŕ and ô are exactly the characters a shallow font drops. Galley picks the quote pair from the book’s language, carries Slovak patterns, and every face on the shelf covers the full set.

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 Slovak gets typeset

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

The full diacritic set goes all the way through, including the two Slovak letters most likely to break something, ĺ and ŕ, and including into the download filename.

Sorting is Slovak, so č, š, ž and ô land where a Slovak reader expects them.

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

The typefaces you get for Slovak

Fifteen faces, all under the SIL Open Font License.

EB Garamond is the safe first choice for a novel.

Charis SIL has the deepest diacritic coverage on the shelf, which is the thing to want in Slovak.

Literata reads well at small sizes and sets an even page.

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

Exports for a Slovak novel

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

Slovak punctuation

The quote pair you get automatically. Slovak dialogue is commonly set with a dash at the head of the line, and that is a character you type.

Slovak keeps the same non-breaking space habit as Czech after one-letter words, and those survive into the print PDF once you type them. The editor’s Invisibles toggle shows where they are.

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

How long a Slovak novel is

Slovak publishing counts in autorské hárky, one hárok being 36,000 characters including spaces, the same unit Czech uses. Galley counts words, so expect to convert at roughly 6.5 characters per word with spaces.

The word count to page count converter turns a length into a page count at your trim.

Trim sizes for a Slovak book

Six standards, from mass market at 4.25×6.87 inches to Royal at 6.14×9.21. Slovak trade fiction is commonly issued around 13×20cm, 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 Slovak ISBN comes from the Slovenská národná knižnica.

Translating into or out of Slovak

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 Czech, writing a novel in Polish and writing a novel in Slovenian.

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

Self-publishing and traditional publishing in Slovak

Self-publishing. Print through a Slovak printer or IngramSpark. Ebook through Martinus, Google Play, Apple Books or Kobo. All of them take a standard print PDF and a standard EPUB.

Traditional publishing. The Slovak trade is small and reads submissions directly. The submission package assembles the synopsis, the bio and the opening chapters. Support from the Fond na podporu umenia is a real part of how Slovak literary fiction gets published.

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.