You finished the draft. Congratulations, you’re about halfway there. The back half, turning that manuscript into files stores and printers will actually accept, is where self-publishing usually sprouts a second tool, a freelancer, or a quietly lost week. Galley keeps the whole thing in one place.

One book, every format

From the same manuscript, with no reformatting, the Toolkit exports:

  • Print-interior PDF - mirrored margins, a true gutter, sized to your trim
  • EPUB 3 - your cover embedded, ready for Kindle, Kobo, and Apple Books
  • Word & Markdown - for editors, submissions, and archives
  • Proofreading PDF - two pages per sheet, laid out for a red pen
  • Beta-reader drafts - one file per reader, their name watermarked in
  • Submission package - synopsis, bio, first chapters, standard manuscript format

Each of those is normally its own faff. Watermarking beta copies by hand, building a submission package to spec, laying out a proofing PDF: all of it, here, is a menu item off the book you already have.

Checked before you upload

Then there’s the KDP preflight. It verifies your trim, margins, metadata, and page count against KDP’s actual rules before you export, so you catch the rejection reasons on your own desk instead of in Amazon’s rejection email a day later. Fixing a margin now is thirty seconds. Fixing it after a failed upload is a re-export and another wait.

Why one tool matters

The alternative is round-tripping. You write in one app, format in a second, maybe proof in a third, and every time you fix a typo you have to push it through all of them again or your files silently drift out of sync. The paperback says one thing, the Kindle says another, and you find out from a reader.

One book, one source of truth, every format generated from it. The part of self-publishing that usually eats a week or a freelancer’s invoice is, here, a few clicks. It is the half of the job nobody warns you about.