---
title: "The Galley philosophy: why I say no on purpose"
description: "Why Galley is for novelists only, web only, one-time priced, and deliberately free of theme libraries, mobile apps, and AI prose. The reasoning behind every refusal."
source: https://usegalley.com/philosophy
---
# Software with *opinions*

Every writing tool is shaped less by what it does than by what
it refuses to do. Most refuse nothing. They grow toward every audience, every
format, every request, and end up as furniture warehouses where you came to
write a book. Galley is built the other way. This page is the reasoning, in one
place, so you can decide whether my opinions fit yours before you buy it.

## The name

A *galley* is a printer's term: the proof pulled right before a book
becomes real, the manuscript already set in its pages, ready for one last read.
That's the whole product in one word. Everything in the app exists to get your
novel from a blank page to a galley without leaving the room.

## Novelists, not “writers”

Galley is not for screenwriters, academics, bloggers, or teams. Because Galley only serves novels, the editor can enforce fiction
conventions (first paragraphs don't indent; scene breaks are typographic), the
story bible can be characters-places-timeline instead of a generic wiki, and the
revision tools can look for the things that actually go wrong in novels: the
drifting character name, the filler word that peaks in chapter twelve. Depth
comes from the narrowing. A tool for everyone is a tool for no one in
particular.

## A web app, on purpose

One codebase, always the latest version, on any computer you sit down at
(Mac, Windows, Linux), with nothing to install and nothing to update. Your
manuscript saves to your account as you write. I back all of it with daily version
snapshots, a 30-day bin, and a one-zip export of everything you've ever written
here.

## No mobile app

Novels are written at desks, in stretches of quiet, on screens big enough to
hold a page. A phone version of Galley would be a guilt machine in your pocket. When you're away from the desk, be away
from the desk. The streak will survive, and if it doesn't, it was measuring the
wrong thing.

## Why the app is dark

The writing room is dark to keep distractions at a minimum, and because the
*page* should be the brightest thing in the room, exactly like a desk
lamp over paper. The page itself flips independently between light and dark, so
you can draft on cream paper at noon or on a dark page at 2am while the room
around it stays quiet either way. Your surroundings should never compete with your prose.

## No theme libraries

Book interiors are one of the most conservative designs in existence, and
that's their beauty: readers never notice them and always feel them. Mirrored
margins, a gutter that respects the spine, running heads, drop folios, indent
conventions. These aren't styles to choose between, they're conventions to get
right. So Galley sets them correctly and gives you the choices that are truly
yours: six named trim sizes, thirty-five book typefaces licensed for commercial
publishing, your own chapter ornament, your own scene-break mark. That's not
fewer options than a theme library, it's the correct ones geared towards novels.

## No image dumps, no fifty formats

You won't find inline image gardens, custom font uploads, or forty export
formats here. A novel's interior is text, set well. Exports are the four that
matter (print-interior PDF, EPUB 3, Word, Markdown) plus the working copies a
novelist actually sends: watermarked beta drafts, a proofreading PDF, an agent
submission package. Every format I'd have to half-support is a format I
refused.

That said, there is a very valid reason for allowing more visual elements for image pages, maps, etc., and is something I'm currently working on.

## No AI in your prose.

Galley's tools count, check, typeset, and remember. None of them write.
Your manuscript is never used to train anything, and no model ever suggests a
sentence into it. This isn't a missing feature, it's the point. The voice on
the page being entirely yours is what makes the book worth writing, and worth
paying for software to protect.

I'm not alone in it, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise.
[Novlr](https://usegalley.com/compare/novlr) is writer-owned and has held this line for
years, and [The Novel Factory](https://usegalley.com/compare/novel-factory) is AI-free with
deeper plotting than I offer. [Novelium](https://usegalley.com/compare/novelium) draws the
line elsewhere, letting AI read the manuscript but not write it, and says so
plainly. [Sudowrite](https://usegalley.com/compare/sudowrite) is openly a co-writer and
never pretends not to be. The ones worth avoiding are the ones that don't say.

## One price, one-time licence

A novel doesn't arrive on a monthly schedule, so Galley doesn't bill on
one. €199, once: every feature, every export, every future update, with no
upgrade fee. It's a one-time licence — it doesn't expire, and there's nothing
to renew. Subscriptions make software grow toward revenue retention, which is the wrong approach for a tool like Galley. I know which one I'd
rather build.

## Leaving must be easy

One click exports your whole library (manuscripts, story bible, versions)
as open formats in a zip. No proprietary file, no export tax, no dark pattern at
the door. Lock-in is a confession that a product can't keep you on merit.

If these opinions read like your opinions, you'll like the app.
Still unsure? [The sorting page](https://usegalley.com/galley-for-you) puts it plainly:
who Galley fits, who it doesn't, and where I'd point you instead.

[See what's inside Galley](https://usegalley.com/)