Preview & export
This is the part that usually costs writers a stressful week: turning a manuscript into files a printer or store will actually accept. In Galley it's a menu. Everything between "the end" and a reader's hands lives under one button.
The Toolkit menu
Up in the book's top bar, click Toolkit . It opens onto everything you can make from your manuscript, grouped:
The last two, Overused words and Name consistency, are covered under Revision. Everything else is below.
Look before you leap: Preview
Before you export a single file, open Preview book and see exactly what you're about to produce. Two views, toggled at the top:
PrintE-reader
- Your real printed book as a two-page spread: the exact pages a printer receives, with margins, page numbers, running heads, and chapter openings. What you see is what you'll hold.
- E-reader
- Your book as an ebook, reflowing onto a simulated e-reader or phone at the reader's chosen text size, not yours. Switch device and size to see how it behaves on real hardware before you publish.
Print · Small trade 5×8″
THE LANTERN OF QUIET HOURS
Out at Lantern Rock the keeper kept the light, humming an old song against the wind, over work that no longer needed the tune.
Whatever the tide left, it left at his door first: a boot, a bottle, once a whole door with its hinges still on.
On the lowest neap of the year the harbour gave up its floor, and the town walked out onto it to see what the sea had been keeping.
At Weirwater the lamps were lit by hand, and it was Mara Vale who lit them, in an order no one had written down and everyone kept.
The station had not sent a boat in nine days. She wrote it in the ledger the way she wrote everything, in a small level hand that gave nothing away.
Out at Lantern Rock the keeper kept the light, humming an old song against the wind, over work that no longer needed the tune.
Whatever the tide left, it left at his door first: a boot, a bottle, once a whole door with its hinges still on.
146
THE STATION AT DUSK
On the lowest neap of the year the harbour gave up its floor, and the town walked out onto it to see what the sea had been keeping.
* * *
At Weirwater the lamps were lit by hand, and it was Mara Vale who lit them, in an order no one had written down and everyone kept.
The station had not sent a boat in nine days. She wrote it in the ledger the way she wrote everything, in a small level hand that gave nothing away.
Out at Lantern Rock the keeper kept the light, humming an old song against the wind, over work that no longer needed the tune.
Whatever the tide left, it left at his door first: a boot, a bottle, once a whole door with its hinges still on.
On the lowest neap of the year the harbour gave up its floor, and the town walked out onto it to see what the sea had been keeping.
At Weirwater the lamps were lit by hand, and it was Mara Vale who lit them, in an order no one had written down and everyone kept.
147
Kindle
The Station at Dusk
Out at Lantern Rock the keeper kept the light, humming an old song against the wind, over work that no longer needed the tune.
Whatever the tide left, it left at his door first: a boot, a bottle, once a whole door with its hinges still on.
* * *
On the lowest neap of the year the harbour gave up its floor, and the town walked out onto it to see what the sea had been keeping.
At Weirwater the lamps were lit by hand, and it was Mara Vale who lit them, in an order no one had written down and everyone kept.
The station had not sent a boat in nine days. She wrote it in the ledger the way she wrote everything, in a small level hand that gave nothing away.
Out at Lantern Rock the keeper kept the light, humming an old song against the wind, over work that no longer needed the tune.
Whatever the tide left, it left at his door first: a boot, a bottle, once a whole door with its hinges still on.
On the lowest neap of the year the harbour gave up its floor, and the town walked out onto it to see what the sea had been keeping.
At Weirwater the lamps were lit by hand, and it was Mara Vale who lit them, in an order no one had written down and everyone kept.
Location 1,204 · 38%
At Weirwater the lamps were lit by hand, and it was Mara Vale who lit them, down at The Quiet Harbour before the neap.1
At Weirwater Station the lamps were not yet lit. Someone had left before the end of their watch.
* * *
The crossing that mattered was set down in the harbour ledger, in a level hand.
Preview
One manuscript
The print spread and the e-reader, from the same words — checked before anyone else sees either.
Read it end to end: Read-through
Preview shows you the pages; Read-through lets you actually read. It opens your whole book as one continuous scroll, every chapter in order, front matter to back, set in your book face with none of the editor's chrome. It's read-only on purpose: it's for the things you only catch at reading speed, a repeated beat, a scene that sags, a chapter that ends a paragraph too late, without the temptation to stop and fiddle with a single sentence.
Out at Lantern Rock the keeper kept the light, humming an old song against the wind, over work that no longer needed the tune.
Whatever the tide left, it left at his door first: a boot, a bottle, once a whole door with its hinges still on.
* * *
On the lowest neap of the year the harbour gave up its floor, and the town walked out onto it to see what the sea had been keeping.
CHAPTER TWO
A Letter Unsent
At Weirwater the lamps were lit by hand, and it was Mara Vale who lit them, in an order no one had written down and everyone kept.
The station had not sent a boat in nine days. She wrote it in the ledger the way she wrote everything, in a small level hand that gave nothing away.
Out at Lantern Rock the keeper kept the light, humming an old song against the wind, over work that no longer needed the tune.
At Weirwater the lamps were lit by hand, and it was Mara Vale who lit them, down at The Quiet Harbour before the neap.1
At Weirwater Station the lamps were not yet lit. Someone had left before the end of their watch.
* * *
The crossing that mattered was set down in the harbour ledger, in a level hand.
Read-through
The whole book
One scroll, front to back, read-only — the way a reader will meet it, not the way you wrote it.
The files you can make
A word on the formats, since the names can be cryptic. Every one is named after your book when it downloads.
The print PDF gives you the real page count, which is the number a cover designer needs. The free spine width calculator turns it into a spine and a full wrap size, and there are more of these on the resources page.
- Print PDF
- The inside of your paperback, properly typeset and sized to your trim, with mirrored margins and a real gutter. This is what you upload for a print edition.
- EPUB
- The ebook file (EPUB 3), with your cover, tagged with your book's language, and carrying its own accessibility metadata. Works on Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, anywhere ebooks are sold.
- Word (.docx)
- A tidy manuscript to send an editor, with your typeface named in the document. You can bring their marked-up version back in, too.
- Manuscript format (.docx)
- The same book set the way editors and agents ask for it: 12pt Times New Roman, double-spaced, one-inch margins, indented paragraphs, your surname and title in the header of every page. It's the plain working copy someone line-edits, not the designed book that Word gives you. For a manuscript that isn't in Galley, the Shunn format generator does the same job in the browser.
- Markdown
- A plain-text copy for your own archive or other tools. Nothing proprietary, nothing locked.
- Proofreading PDF
- Two pages to a sheet, spaced out with room to mark up in pen.
Copies made for other people
- Share a copy
- A watermarked copy for each reader, with their name printed on every page. Enter a few names and pick how they get it: an EPUB, a PDF, or a link that opens the book in a reader. A link takes a password and an expiry date, tells you whether it has been opened, and can be turned off. Your reader lands on a page naming you and the book before it opens.
- Submission package
- Your synopsis, author bio, and first three chapters, in the double-spaced format literary agents expect. No fiddling.
- KDP preflight
- A checklist run against your book before you upload to Kindle Direct Publishing, so you catch the small things (a missing ISBN, an odd trim) on your side, not in their rejection email. See Publishing.
- Back up everything
- Your entire library, story bible included, as one downloadable zip. Peace of mind in a click, and your escape hatch: your work is never trapped here.
Glossary & references at export
The apparatus you built while writing (see the story bible) assembles itself when you export:
- The glossary becomes an alphabetical page at the back: each term in italics, an em dash, then its definition.
- References become true endnotes, numbered per chapter. In the text you get a small superscript number; on the notes page the numbers restart each chapter, grouped under that chapter's heading, with the citation beside each. Rearrange chapters and it all renumbers itself.
Your design comes along automatically
Everything you set in Book design (trim, typeface, chapter openings, scene breaks, running heads, justification, language) shows up in the exports without a second step. Galley also builds the table of contents, the copyright page, and the glossary and references pages, and numbers everything. You assemble nothing by hand.