---
title: "Galley for Self-Publishing"
description: "What self-publishing a novel in Galley involves: a print-ready interior PDF, a valid EPUB, a tuned file per store, and two checks that run before you upload to KDP."
source: https://usegalley.com/blog/galley-for-self-publishing
---
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# Galley for Self-Publishing

August 15, 2026 [Publishing](https://usegalley.com/blog/tag/publishing)[Galley](https://usegalley.com/blog/tag/galley)

![A print interior PDF and an EPUB exported from the same manuscript](https://usegalley.com/images/blog/galley-for-self-publishing.png) TL;DR Self-publishing needs two files, a print-interior PDF and an EPUB, and both come out of the same book because the page was set correctly from the first sentence. Before you upload, KDP preflight tells you what Amazon will reject, and delivery readiness tells you whether the book is actually finished. There is no reformatting week at the end, because there is no conversion at the end.

Most self-publishing advice treats formatting as the last step. Finish the
novel, then spend a week in a formatting tool, then spend a second week fixing
what the import broke. I have watched people budget a fortnight for that and
lose a month.

Galley moves the step to the front instead. You pick the [trim size](https://usegalley.com/glossary#trim-size) and the
typeface before chapter one, so the page you type on is the page that gets
printed. Nothing converts at the end, so nothing surprises you at the end.

Here is what the self-publishing half of the tool actually does.

## The two files you need

A paperback needs a print-interior PDF. Fixed pages, mirrored margins, and a
real gutter, which is the inner margin that disappears into the spine if nobody
accounts for it. Galley sizes it to whichever of the six trim sizes you chose,
justifies it, and hyphenates it for the language the book is written in.

An ebook needs an [EPUB](https://usegalley.com/glossary#epub). Reflowable, cover embedded, chapter navigation working,
so the reader’s device decides where the lines break. That is the entire point
of an ebook and it is why a [print PDF](https://usegalley.com/glossary#print-pdf) makes such a bad one.

Both files come out of one manuscript. Fix a typo and both carry the fix, which
is the part that saves you six months from now when the paperback and the Kindle
edition would otherwise have quietly stopped agreeing.
[The longer version of that argument is here](https://usegalley.com/blog/epub-vs-print-pdf).

## One EPUB per store, when the stores disagree

The generic EPUB works everywhere. If you want to be fussier, Galley will build
a tuned file for Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play and Nook.

The differences are small and annoying. Older Kindle and Nook e-ink renderers
overlap a floated [drop cap](https://usegalley.com/glossary#drop-cap) with the text underneath it, so those two get a
raised initial instead and the other three keep the proper drop cap. If you have
other books with store links saved, the “Also by” page in the [back matter](https://usegalley.com/glossary#back-matter) points
at the store the reader is already in, rather than sending your Kobo reader to
Amazon.

## Two checks before you upload

The first is narrow.
[KDP preflight](https://usegalley.com/docs/publishing#preflight) asks whether Amazon will accept the
file: title, author and description filled in, a cover added, page count inside
what the trim allows, no empty chapters, a table of contents, every chapter
marked Final. Green across the board means upload it. It is much cheaper to
learn this from me than from
[a KDP rejection email](https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201834190).

The second is the harder question.
[Delivery readiness](https://usegalley.com/docs/publishing#delivery-readiness) asks whether the book
is done as a book, and it is unsentimental. Chapters that are empty or still
sitting at fifty words. A missing copyright page. Comments you left yourself
while drafting and never went back to, counted and located. A quoted lyric still
marked “to request” in the permissions ledger, which is the one that ends in a
letter from someone’s lawyer.

Neither check blocks an export. A short chapter is often deliberate. They exist
so the only reason something is missing is that you meant it to be.

## The pages a published book has

The copyright page writes itself out of the metadata you already filled in, so
you are not retyping your own ISBN into a template you found on a forum. The
table of contents builds itself. If you kept a glossary or used references while
writing, they assemble into real back matter at export, and the endnotes
renumber themselves when you move a chapter.

Your cover, blurb, ISBN, categories and keywords live in one place.
[Whether you need an ISBN at all](https://usegalley.com/blog/do-you-need-an-isbn) depends on where you
are publishing and how much you care about the imprint, and I would read that
before buying one.

## Copies for other people

Advance readers get a watermarked draft with their own name printed on every
page, one file per reader, so a leaked copy is traceable. Your proofreader gets
a proofreading PDF, two pages to a sheet, made for a red pen. Readers who need
it bigger get a large-print PDF of the same book.

## What Galley does not do

It does not design your cover. It does not run your launch, build your mailing
list, or price your book. It will not buy your ISBN or open your KDP account.

If decorative interior themes are the thing you are buying,
[Vellum](https://usegalley.com/compare/vellum) is better at that than I am and it is not close. Galley
sets classic book conventions correctly and stops there, on purpose. What you get
instead is one manuscript that has been the finished book the whole time, and an
export menu at the end of it rather than a project.

## Where to start

The demo is the real app with a book already in it, no signup, about half an
hour. Open the Toolkit and run an export on a book you did not write. That will
tell you more than this page can.

[Galley for self-publishing authors](https://usegalley.com/for/self-publishing-authors) ·
[Exports and the toolkit](https://usegalley.com/features/make-the-book) ·
[Publishing and preflight](https://usegalley.com/docs/publishing) ·
[Manuscript to published book](https://usegalley.com/blog/manuscript-to-published-book)

## More on publishing

- [Standard Manuscript Format, and What Agents Actually Check](https://usegalley.com/blog/standard-manuscript-format)The Shunn manuscript format specification in plain terms: font, spacing, margins, indents, scene breaks, the running header, and the word count that should be rounded.
- [Writing Software for Novelists Who Don't Write in English](https://usegalley.com/blog/write-a-novel-in-your-language)How to write and typeset a book in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Hebrew, Hindi, Bengali, Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Russian, Greek or Vietnamese, which typeface each script gets, and what still needs building.
- [Accessible Ebooks and the European Accessibility Act](https://usegalley.com/blog/accessible-ebooks-and-the-eaa)What the EAA means for a self-published novel sold in the EU: accessibility metadata, what makes an EPUB accessible, the microenterprise exemption, and the large-print edition nobody makes.

[Every publishing post](https://usegalley.com/blog/tag/publishing)

[← All posts](https://usegalley.com/blog)

Galley is the tool that does the part this post is about — the finished, printable book.

[Launch Galley](https://app.usegalley.com)