Your first book
There are three ways to start: a blank book, a manuscript you've already written, or a new book based on one you already have in Galley. It only takes a couple of minutes, and you can change everything later.
The New book window
From your dashboard, click New book . The window opens with three tabs across the top:
BlankImportFrom existing
Starting a blank book
Galley asks you a few things first. You can change all of them later on the Metadata page.
- Title and author. Working titles are completely fine. Polish them later.
- Book or idea. Mark it an idea if it's more of a someday project than a live one, and it waits on a separate shelf on your dashboard until you're ready.
- Trim size. The physical size of the finished paperback. Unsure? Leave it on US Trade (6×9″), what most novels use. Full rundown in Book design.
- The pages around your story. Tick the front and back matter you want (title page, copyright, dedication, table of contents, and so on). Add or remove them any time.
Galley creates the book with an empty Chapter 1 and the pages you picked, and opens it so you can start writing.
Importing a manuscript you've already started
If you have a draft in Word or somewhere else, you don't need to copy and paste it chapter by chapter. Go to the Import tab and choose your file. The full walkthrough, with how chapters are split, is import a manuscript.
- Accepts
- Word (
.docx), plain text (.txt), and Markdown (.md). - Auto-splits
- Galley splits the document into chapters wherever it finds a heading or a line like "Chapter 1" or "Chapter Two".
- Shows you first
- Before anything is saved, you see the chapters it found and a word count, so you can check they look right.
From an existing book: translations & editions
The From existing tab bases a new book on one you already have: a translation into another language, or a separate edition. Galley copies the chapters and story bible and links the two books. There's a separate page about this: Series, editions & translations.
The dashboard
The dashboard is the first thing you see when you sign in, and it's set up to get you back to writing quickly. From anywhere in the app, ⌘K opens the command palette, where you can jump to any chapter, character or place by name. It's worth spending ten minutes on the rest of the keyboard shortcuts early on.
Tuesday, September 29
Good afternoon
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: 104k words in.
Daily words written
Continue writing
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
1 open note in 1 chapter
Today
412 of 500
Day streak
2 days
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.”
Momentum
412 of 500 today
The book you were last in, one click from resuming, with the goal you set. Goals are optional.
- Continue writing
- The book you were last working on, with its cover and a Resume button that opens the chapter you left off in.
- Momentum
- If you've set goals, a ring for today, a two-week chart and a streak for that book. They're optional, and covered in Account.
- Your other books
- Everything else you're writing, with word counts and a progress bar based on each book's chapter stages.
- Ideas
- Books you've marked as ideas, kept separately from the ones you're writing.
- Recent sessions
- A short log of the days you wrote and how much.
Everything saves automatically as soon as you start typing. Read The editor next to learn about the writing page, and Tag a character with @ once your cast has names.