Welcome to Galley
Galley is an app for writing a novel and then turning it into a book. These pages explain every screen, button and setting, and you don't need any technical background to follow them.
Getting started
- Your first book Start a book or bring in the one you’ve already written. Read it
- Import a manuscript Bring in a Word file and it splits into chapters. Read it
- Series, editions & translations Sequels, second editions and translations, kept linked. Read it
- Start a translation A linked copy, with the original beside every chapter. Read it
Writing
- The editor Every button on the page you write on, explained. Read it
- Structure & chapters Chapters, parts, front matter and the order they go in. Read it
- Shortcuts & the palette Jump anywhere with ⌘K and keep your hands on the keys. Read it
- Writing offline Chapters save to your device when the connection drops (beta). Read it
- Accessibility What works with a keyboard and a screen reader. Read it
The story bible
Book design
Revise & publish
- Revision tools Overused words, names spelled two ways, and pacing. Read it
- Go back to an earlier version Compare a chapter with any snapshot and restore it. Read it
- Preview & export Print PDF, EPUB, Word and copies for other people. Read it
- Export a print PDF for KDP Check it with preflight, then export the interior. Read it
- Send copies to beta readers One watermarked copy per reader, or a link you can turn off. Read it
- Publishing KDP preflight, your listing and the copyright page. Read it
Your account
CHAPTER ONE
A Scandal in Bohemia
To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind.
I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us away from each other. My own complete happiness, and the home-centred interests which rise up around the man who first finds himself master of his own establishment, were sufficient to absorb all my attention, while Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature.
His manner was not effusive. It seldom was; but he was glad, I think, to see me. With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindly eye, he waved me to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars, and indicated a spirit case and a gasogene in the corner.
“Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed.”
To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name.
He waved me to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars, and indicated a spirit case and a gasogene in the corner.
* * *
“Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed.”
Glossary
gasogene
A Victorian siphon for making soda water at home: two glass globes in a wire or wicker cage. Holmes keeps one in the corner of the sitting room at Baker Street.
If you've written a book in Word or Google Docs, you'll know the two main problems. The app doesn't know what a chapter is, and when you finish, you spend a week fixing margins to make it look like a book. Galley is built to fix both. You write on a page that already looks like a paperback, your characters and notes are next to your writing, and you can export files that are ready to publish.
It runs in your web browser, so there's nothing to download and it's always up to date. Your work saves as you type. Offline writing is in beta: if you lose your connection, your chapters keep saving to your device and sync when you're back online (see Writing offline). You'll need a laptop, desktop or tablet, because Galley doesn't work on phones.
Who Galley is for
Novelists. Galley isn't for screenwriters, bloggers or teams writing reports. Because it only does novels, it understands chapters, keeps track of your characters, and finds the kinds of mistakes that happen in fiction, like a name misspelled once in chapter fourteen or a filler word you use too much.
No AI touches your prose
No AI writes, rewrites or "improves" anything in your book. Galley's tools count, check and lay out the page, but none of them add words. Your writing is never used to train anything, and you can download all of it whenever you want. There's more on that in Your data & privacy.
When you need a hand
Inside the app, click your profile picture and choose Help & feedback. Your message comes to me, the person who built Galley. You can suggest features from there too.