Novel Get early access

Write on real pages.

A novel editor for the Mac. Your book is typeset as you write, on the pages it will be printed on.

1 The Page

Novel sets every paragraph as you type it, with the care of a printed novel. Lines break the way a typesetter breaks them, words hyphenate where they should, and no line is left stranded at the top of a page. Quotes curl, dashes join, and each chapter opens with a drop cap.

Choose a trim, the 5.5 × 8.5 of a paperback, the 6 × 9 of a hardcover or one of your own, and that is the page you write on. One page or two facing, in Literata or Source Serif, light or dark. What you see is what the PDF prints.

The keeper had not spoken aloud in eleven days, and when the boat finally came around the point he found that his voice had gone somewhere without him. 

Type on this page. Try a quotation, or two hyphens.
A close-up of a chapter opening in Novel: the chapter number, its title in italics, a drop cap, curly quotation marks and justified lines.
In Novel: the opening of chapter one, close up.

2 The Whole Book

Pinch out from the page and the chapters gather into an outline: every chapter and every scene, with its first line and its word count. Drag them into a new order. Pinch out again and you are at the shelf, where each book you are writing stands at its own size. Pinch in on anything to go back down.

No trackpad? ⇧⌘O goes between the page and the outline, and Esc goes up a level.

The page: chapter one of The Lighthouse, typeset, with the chapter rail beside it. The outline: every chapter and scene of The Lighthouse, with first lines and word counts. The shelf: books on shelves as covers at their own trim sizes, each with its word count.

3 Finding Your Way

A quiet rail beside the page holds a mark for every chapter. Run the pointer down it and each one shows its title and first line. Quick Jump takes you anywhere in a keystroke: a chapter by name or number, a scene, or a few words you remember.

Select a passage and write a note beside it, or leave a dot in the margin. Notes stay with their words through every edit, even edits made in another app, and never reach the printed page.

The chapter rail beside the page, showing the card for chapter 13, Storm Glass: its first line and word count.
The rail
Quick Jump over the page, finding the chapter The Stair.
Quick Jump
A sentence on the page, underlined in yellow. The note on it, in the notes panel: Echo this when the boy leaves.
A note

4 Every Edition

When the book is done, Export makes it ready for the world. A print-ready PDF for the paperback, the hardcover or both, with a title page, a copyright page and running heads. An EPUB for every reader, with its cover, its contents and its place in a series. And a manuscript in Word, in the standard format agents and editors ask for.

The Lighthouse

M. Harbour

Paperback PDF, 5.5 × 8.5 in

The Lighthouse

A Novel

M. Harbour

Hardcover PDF, 6 × 9 in

4

The Stair

The keeper had not spoken aloud in eleven days, and when the boat finally came around the point he found that his voice had gone somewhere without him. He raised a hand instead. The boy at the tiller raised one back, and that was enough.

EPUB for every reader

Harbour / THE LIGHTHOUSE / 41

CHAPTER FOUR

The Stair

The keeper had not spoken aloud in eleven days, and when the boat finally came around the point he found that his voice had gone somewhere without him. He raised a hand instead. The boy at the tiller raised one back, and that was enough.

Word manuscript, 8.5 × 11 in
Novel's Export sheet, with a tab each for PDF, EPUB and Word; the PDF tab offers the hardcover edition, 6 by 9 inches, 267 pages.
File ▸ Export… shows what each will make.

5 Your Files

Every chapter is a plain Markdown file, in a folder you own. Novel saves as you write, and when a chapter changes in another app, the page changes with it. Keep your books in iCloud Drive, in Git, anywhere a folder can go, and open them in any app, today or in twenty years.

  • The Lighthouse
  • book.yaml
  • 001 The Lighthouse.md
  • 002.md
  • 003 Low Tide.md
  • 004 The Stair.md
  • notes.md
  • cover.jpg
  • exports
# Low Tide

At low tide the causeway rose out of the water
like the spine of some sleeping animal, and for
three hours a day the island was not an island
at all.

They walked it together on the fourth day.
Halfway across, the boy stopped and turned in a
slow circle, arms out. “It’s bigger from here,”
he said. “*Everything* is.”

* * *

The tide turned while they were eating chips on
the harbour wall.

6 Quiet

When you start to type, the toolbar and the rail fade away and there is only the page. Novel opens the longest book in a blink and never makes a keystroke wait. It is a Mac app through and through: light and dark pages, Typewriter Scrolling, VoiceOver, Writing Tools, Spotlight, and a shortcut for everything.

Novel while you type: The Lighthouse as two facing pages, chapter 4 opening on the left, with the toolbar and the rail faded away.

A quiet place to write a novel.

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