Book writing software for writing a novel in Welsh

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

Welsh has an alphabet that most software does not know is an alphabet. Ch, dd, ff, ng, ll, ph, rh and th are single letters, and they sort as single letters, so a Welsh cast list ordered the English way puts everything beginning with Ll in the wrong place and separates Dd from D incorrectly at the same time. Galley sorts a Welsh book in the Welsh alphabet, because sorting follows the book’s language instead of the browser’s default.

The second thing is the to bach, the circumflex on ŵ and ŷ. Plenty of fonts carry â ê î ô û and stop, because circumflexed w and y are rare outside Welsh. Every face on Galley’s shelf carries them, and they survive typing, search, both exports and the download filename.

The third is that Amazon lists Welsh in all three formats, Kindle ebook, paperback and hardcover, so every route is open to a Welsh-language book.

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 Welsh gets typeset

Sorting is Welsh, digraphs and all.

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

The circumflexed vowels go all the way through, including into the download filename.

Italics work. All fifteen faces ship a drawn italic.

The typefaces you get for Welsh

Fifteen faces, all under the SIL Open Font License. Coverage of ŵ and ŷ is the test, and all fifteen pass it.

EB Garamond is the safe first choice for a novel.

Charis SIL and Gentium Book Plus both come from SIL, which builds for exactly this problem.

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

Exports for a Welsh novel

• Print-ready PDF at your trim, mirrored margins, real gutter, font embedded.
• EPUB 3 with your cover, tagged cy.
• Store-ready EPUBs for Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books.
• Word and Markdown for a golygydd 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.

Welsh punctuation

Welsh sets speech in the curly double pair, and a dash at the head of the line is common too. Both are characters you type.

The apostrophe carries real work in Welsh, in forms like a’r and i’w, and the closing single quote is the apostrophe in every quote style Galley ships, so it curls correctly.

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

How long a Welsh novel is

Welsh publishers quote length in words and printed pages. The market is small, so extent and trim decide the print economics more directly than in English. Galley counts words and projects a page count at your trim.

The word count to page count converter and the spine width calculator do the sums.

Trim sizes for a Welsh book

Six standards, from mass market at 4.25×6.87 inches to Royal at 6.14×9.21. Welsh publishing follows British formats, so B-format at 5.06×7.81 inches is the familiar paperback and Royal is the larger trade size. The trim size comparison puts them side by side.

Metadata and the copyright page

The copyright page writes itself from the metadata you filled in. A Welsh book takes a UK ISBN, and the language field is what tells a store and a reading device that the book is Welsh rather than English.

Translating into or out of Welsh

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. An English edition of a Welsh novel is exactly that case, and the two stay linked in your dashboard instead of becoming two unrelated books.

There are pages on writing a novel in Irish, writing a novel in Icelandic and writing a novel in English.

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

Self-publishing and traditional publishing in Welsh

Self-publishing. Amazon takes Welsh in all three formats, and the same print PDF goes to a Welsh printer or IngramSpark.

Traditional publishing. Welsh-language publishing runs through a small set of houses with support from the Books Council of Wales, which is a real route rather than a formality. 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.
• From manuscript to published book is the whole route.