Book writing software for writing a novel in Ukrainian

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

Two facts shape a Ukrainian book, and neither of them is about writing.

The first is that Amazon prints Ukrainian and refuses to sell it as a Kindle ebook. Paperback and hardcover are on Amazon’s list, the Kindle store is not. That is Amazon’s rule and no software can route around it, so a Ukrainian book’s ebook life happens at Yakaboo, Google Play, Apple Books or Kobo. Galley tells you that instead of letting you discover it at upload: the Kindle-specific tools switch themselves off on a Ukrainian book with the reason attached, and every export still works.

The second is that five of the fifteen Latin book faces cannot render a single word of Ukrainian. Libre Baskerville is one, and it is a beautiful face. Before the shelf was filtered by language you could pick it, write the book and find out at export. Now the shelf is filtered: set the book’s language to Ukrainian and only the ten faces that carry a full Cyrillic alphabet are offered.

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 Ukrainian gets typeset

Cyrillic italic is a different alphabet, not a slope. Italic т is drawn like a Latin m and italic д like a g, so a font with no drawn Cyrillic italic gets faked by the renderer and a Ukrainian reader sees it at once. All ten faces on the shelf carry a real one.

Hyphenation follows Ukrainian rules, in the justified print PDF only. Ukrainian words are long and a justified page without hyphenation opens rivers.

The four letters that separate Ukrainian from Russian all work. Ґ, і, ї and є come through typing, search, sorting, both exports and the download filename, so a book called Тиша Ґанку arrives under its own name.

Sorting is Ukrainian, so a cast list or a glossary comes out in the Ukrainian alphabet instead of the browser’s default.

The typefaces you get for Ukrainian

Ten of the fifteen book faces carry a full Cyrillic alphabet: Alegreya, Charis SIL, Cormorant, EB Garamond, Gentium Book Plus, Literata, Lora, Source Serif 4, Spectral and Vollkorn. Every one is under the SIL Open Font License, which is the licence that lets Galley embed the font in a file you sell.

EB Garamond is the safe first choice for a novel.

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

Vollkorn is warmer and a little heavier, and it sets well at small sizes.

What you will not find here: the ParaType families and the commercial Ukrainian revivals. The typeface documentation lists every face by language.

Exports for a Ukrainian novel

• Print-ready PDF at your trim, mirrored margins, real gutter, font embedded, hyphenated on Ukrainian patterns if you justify.
• EPUB 3 with your cover, tagged uk, for every store except Amazon.
• Store-ready EPUBs for Kobo and Apple Books.
• Word and Markdown for a редактор 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 revision tools work in Ukrainian because they stopped assuming the Latin alphabet: overused words, name consistency and the consistency sweep all tokenise on Unicode letter properties.

Ukrainian punctuation

Type a straight double quote in a Ukrainian book and you get « and », because the quote marks follow the book’s language. That was broken until recently: the rule was keyed by script, and Cyrillic covers Ukrainian and Russian, which quote «», alongside Bulgarian and Serbian, which quote „“. All four were getting English curly quotes.

Dialogue takes a dash at the head of the line, which is a character you type. The apostrophe in words like м’ясо is an ordinary character and survives everywhere.

The dialogue punctuation rules sheet covers speech across conventions.

How long a Ukrainian novel is

Ukrainian publishing counts in авторські аркуші, one аркуш being 40,000 characters including spaces. Galley counts words, so expect to convert at roughly 6.5 characters per word with spaces, which puts a 90,000 word novel near 15 аркушів.

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

Trim sizes for a Ukrainian book

Six standards, from mass market at 4.25×6.87 inches to Royal at 6.14×9.21. Ukrainian trade fiction is commonly issued around 13×20cm or 14.5×21.5cm, which land near 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 Ukrainian ISBN comes from the Книжкова палата.

Translating into or out of Ukrainian

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 Russian, writing a novel in Polish and writing a novel in Bulgarian.

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

Self-publishing and traditional publishing in Ukrainian

Self-publishing. Print through Amazon, a Ukrainian printer or IngramSpark. Ebook through Yakaboo, Google Play, Apple Books or Kobo, all of which take a standard EPUB. The Kindle store is the one door Amazon keeps shut.

Traditional publishing. Ukrainian houses read 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.