Galley for self-publishing authors
Type the last sentence, and the files are already made.
Self-publishing usually runs on three tools and a freelancer: one to draft in, one to format in, one to check the formatting, and a person to fix whatever broke on the way between them. Galley is meant to be the only one. You choose the trim size and the typeface before chapter one, so the page you type on is the page that gets printed, and the menu at the end has no conversion step in it.
Trim size
Small trade 5×8″ — offered by KDP
Bleed & margins
Inside margin 0.75″ at 6 chapters — clears the gutter
Embedded fonts
EB Garamond — licensed for commercial print
Front matter
Title page, copyright and dedication present
ISBN
None set. KDP will assign a free one — fine, unless you want your own imprint.
Cover
No cover uploaded. KDP will reject the book at submission.
Table of contents
Built from 6 chapters in 2 parts
Image resolution
No images below 300 dpi
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.
Publishing
Fixed here, not there
Every KDP requirement checked before you upload — so you deal with it on your side, not in a rejection email.
Why Galley, for you specifically
The formatting week never happens
There is no import at the end, so there is nothing to break. Six trim sizes from mass market to Royal, 35 book typefaces licensed for commercial publishing, five chapter opening conventions, mirrored margins and a true gutter. Set them once and every chapter follows. The reason most authors budget a fortnight for formatting and lose a month is that they are converting a document into a book; here it was a book the whole time.
Two files, one manuscript, permanently in sync
A paperback needs a print-interior PDF with fixed pages. An ebook needs a reflowable EPUB. Both come out of the same book, so a typo fixed in August is fixed in both. The drift between a paperback and a Kindle edition that quietly stopped agreeing is a self-publishing rite of passage, and it comes entirely from keeping two source files.
One tuned EPUB per store, if you want to be fussy
Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play and Nook each get their own file. Older Kindle and Nook e-ink renderers overlap a floated drop cap with the text underneath, so those two get a raised initial and the other three keep the proper one. If your other books have store links saved, the "Also by" page in the back matter points at the shop the reader is already standing in.
Two checks before you upload, asking different questions
KDP preflight asks whether Amazon will accept the file: title, author and description present, a cover added, page count inside what the trim allows, no empty chapters, a table of contents, every chapter marked Final. Delivery readiness asks whether the book is finished as a book, and it is less forgiving. Thin chapters, a missing copyright page, comments you left yourself and never resolved, a quoted lyric still sitting at "to request" in the permissions ledger.
The parts nobody enjoys, written for you
The copyright page assembles itself out of the metadata you already entered, so you are not retyping your own ISBN into a template off a forum. The table of contents builds itself. Glossary terms and references become real back matter, and the endnotes renumber when you move a chapter.
You pay once, and nothing reads your book
€199, one time, every feature and every export format included. No AI writes, rewrites or suggests a sentence, and nothing trains on your manuscript. Amazon now asks you to declare AI-generated content when you publish, and being able to answer that without qualifying it is worth something.
What the whole path looks like
Every stage links to the part of the docs that explains it.
| Stage | What Galley does | Read on |
|---|---|---|
| Set the book up | Trim size, typeface, chapter openings, scene breaks, British or American house style. Ten minutes, once. | Book design |
| Write it | On the finished page, with the story bible on the next tab and focus mode when the room needs to go quiet. | The writing room |
| Revise it | Overused words per thousand, the character spelled two ways, British and American drift, the chapter that sags. | Revision |
| Get it read | Watermarked drafts, one file per advance reader. A proofreading PDF at two pages a sheet for anyone with a red pen. | Copies for other people |
| Fill in the listing | Cover, blurb, ISBN, categories and keywords in one place. The copyright page writes itself from them. | Cover and listing |
| Run both checks | Preflight for what Amazon will reject, delivery readiness for what you would regret. | Preflight |
| Export and upload | Print-interior PDF, EPUB 3, a tuned file per store, and a large-print edition of the same book. | Every export format |
| Then do the next one | Group the books into a series and the design carries across. Derive a second edition or a translation with the structure and bible intact. | Series and editions |
The features that matter here
Everything in Galley is included at one price. These are the ones you will actually live in.
The full inventory is longer than this. Nothing is held back for a higher tier, because there isn't one.
Where Galley is the wrong tool
You are buying decorative interiors
Vellum's themed interiors are the benchmark and it is not close. Galley sets classic book conventions correctly and stops there, deliberately. If the themes are the product you want, buy the themes.
You need a cover designed
Galley holds your cover, sizes the book around it, and checks it is there before you upload. It does not draw it. That is still a designer, or one of the cover tools, and it is money well spent.
You are assembling a box set
Series grouping is built, box-set compilation is not. If your next release is three novels bound as one file, that part is still manual.
Questions
I’m self-publishing. What do I actually get at the end?
Two files, mainly. A print-interior PDF sized to your trim, with mirrored margins and a real gutter so the inside edge doesn't vanish into the spine, and a valid EPUB 3 with your cover and working chapter navigation. If you want to be fussier there's a tuned EPUB per store, for Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play and Nook. The copyright page and the table of contents write themselves out of what you already filled in. Then two checks before you upload: KDP preflight tells you what Amazon will reject, and delivery readiness answers the harder question of whether the book is finished as a book.
Galley for self-publishing authorsThe self-publishing walkthrough
Is it only for Amazon KDP?
No. The output is standard: print-interior PDF and EPUB 3 work with KDP, IngramSpark, Draft2Digital, Kobo, Apple Books, or a local printer. KDP gets a bit of extra attention, with its trims and preflight checks built in, because that's where most self-publishers start.
Can I do both, query agents and self-publish?
Yes, and a lot of people end up doing exactly that. It's one book either way, so there's no migration between the two paths: the manuscript export, the print PDF and the EPUB all sit in the same menu. Draft milestones let you mark and name a version, so "the draft I sent my agent" stays something you can open a year later when she finally replies and asks whether much has changed.
Keep reading
The website can't make you feel what using Galley is like. Thirty minutes in it can.
Launch GalleyOpens straight into a book. Nothing to install, nothing to sign up for.