One book, three ways

A human translation of a novel costs five figures, so most books never get one. Here is how the options compare.

	Freelance translator	Raw machine translation	Publify
Cost — full-length novel	$8,000–15,000 · $0.08–0.12 per word	Free	$100–200, fixed per book*
Time to manuscript	6–12 months	Minutes	Hours; the first chapter comes first, free
Names, terms, your world	In one person's notes	Change from chapter to chapter: John becomes Iwan, then John again	One glossary for the whole book, built before translation. You can edit any entry.
Your voice	Excellent with a strong translator	Smoothed out, sentence by sentence	Register and sentence rhythm are detected for your book and kept in every chapter, then a final read-through for natural phrasing
Store-ready file	A text file; layout is up to you	Broken chapters, lost images	EPUB and DOCX with chapters and images in place, plus a translated cover
Rights	Depends on the contract	Yours	100% yours, original and translation

Your book is already written. Each new language is a new market for it. Try one for the price of a book ad and add more where readers buy.

Check the quality before you pay

This is what Publify keeps, in commercial and literary fiction alike. You'll see all of it in your own first chapter.

Your narrative styleSentence rhythm and register are detected for your book and enforced in every chapter.

Your characters' voicesEach character speaks the same way in chapter twelve as in chapter one.

Your names and termsOne glossary covers the whole manuscript. You can edit any entry.

Your structureChapters, epigraphs, images and layout stay where you put them.

Poetry, heavy wordplay and children's books may still need a human translator's touch. The free first chapter will show how your book comes out.

“Why not just run it through a chatbot?”

Over 300 pages, generic AI loses track: names change, idioms get translated word for word, the author's style gets smoothed out. Pick a language pair to see examples:

Names & glossary

Nicknames and invented terms drift over hundreds of pages. We fix them once for the whole book.

Original

Ch. 1 — “Ash waited by the tide pools.”
Ch. 17 — “Ash was already gone.”

Generic AI

Cap. 1 — «Ash esperaba junto a las pozas de marea.»
Cap. 17 — «La Ceniza ya se había ido.»

By chapter 17 the nickname has turned into an ordinary word, and the reader sees a different character.

Publify

Cap. 1 — «Ash esperaba junto a las pozas de marea.»
Cap. 17 — «Ash ya se había ido.»

The glossary entry is set before translation starts: the nickname stays untranslated.

Idioms

Word-for-word idioms read as nonsense in the target language. We translate the meaning.

Original

“By Sunday the whole street knew — Tom had spilled the beans.”

Generic AI

«Para el domingo toda la calle lo sabía: Tom había derramado los frijoles.»

Translated word for word, it means nothing in the target language.

Publify

«Para el domingo toda la calle lo sabía: Tom se había ido de la lengua.»

Rendered with the target language's own idiom.

Author's voice

Short, clipped sentences are the author's choice. Generic AI “fixes” them; we keep them.

Original

“He didn’t answer. The kettle screamed. Somewhere upstairs, a door.”

Generic AI

«Él no respondió mientras el hervidor gritaba y en algún lugar del piso de arriba se oía una puerta.»

Three short sentences merged into one smooth one, and the tension is gone.

Publify

«No contestó. El hervidor chilló. Arriba, en alguna parte, una puerta.»

Same clipped rhythm the author wrote.

Selected examples of the three most common mistakes. Your first chapter goes through the same checks.

The cover ships with the book

With the original cover, a translated book still looks foreign in the store. Publify translates the text on your cover or generates a new one in the same style, with the title in the target language.

This pair is real Publify output: the Spanish cover was generated from the original.

How it works

Upload your manuscriptEPUB, DOCX, RTF or TXT — chapters and images are preserved automatically.

Read chapter one for freeYour first chapter goes through every stage and comes with a quality report in your language.

Pay once, fixed priceThe price is fixed before you pay. Before the full run you can edit the glossary: names, places, terms.

Download and publishEPUB and DOCX with a translated cover, ready for KDP, Apple Books and Google Play.

From upload to finished book takes a few hours. Everything happens on the site, no calls.

Languages

50+ language pairs work today. If yours is missing, we add it on request in 1–2 weeks.

EN ↔ ESEN ↔ DEEN ↔ PL EN → TREN → KOEN ↔ RU DE ↔ PLEN → UZ + 40 more

All translation directions →

Your manuscript stays yours

✓100% of rights stay with you — the original and the translated edition
✓Never published or shared — we don't show your files to anyone
✓Encrypted EU storage — EU-region servers only
✓Deleted on request — we delete files and translations when you ask
✓Card-safe checkout — payments run through Paddle; we never see your card

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Your book has readers who can't read it yet

One book, three ways

Check the quality before you pay

“Why not just run it through a chatbot?”

Original

Generic AI

Publify

Original

Generic AI

Publify

Original

Generic AI

Publify

The cover ships with the book

How it works

Languages

Your manuscript stays yours

Read your first chapter in another language today

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