Convert a PDF into an EPUB ebook

How to convert PDF to EPUB

1. Add your PDF. Drag the file onto the drop zone. The text and structure are analysed locally.
2. Check the detected chapters. The tool infers headings from font sizes and shows the chapter list it found. Adjust the sensitivity if it split too much or too little.
3. Add book details. Set the title and author so your reader's library shows the book properly rather than a filename.
4. Download the EPUB. Save the file and send it to your Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books or any other reader.

Why PDFs are miserable on e-readers

A PDF has a fixed page size. Every line break, column and margin was decided for a sheet of A4 or Letter paper and cannot change. On a six-inch e-reader that page gets scaled down until the text is too small to read, so you end up zooming and panning across each page — the reading experience everyone who has tried a PDF on a Kindle recognises.

EPUB stores the text as content rather than as a page. The reader lays it out to fit whatever screen it is on, at whatever font size you choose. Line breaks happen where they need to. You get proper page-turns, working bookmarks, adjustable margins and text-to-speech.

That is the entire reason to convert: not a change in format for its own sake, but making a document actually readable on the device you want to read it on.

Which PDFs convert well, and which do not

Conversion quality depends almost entirely on the source, so it is worth setting expectations before you start.

• Converts well — novels, reports, papers and any document that is mostly flowing prose in a single column. These come out close to a native ebook.
• Converts reasonably — documents with occasional images and simple tables. The text reflows correctly; images are placed inline and tables are simplified.
• Converts poorly — magazines, textbooks with heavy multi-column layouts and sidebars, sheet music, and anything where the visual arrangement is the content. Reflowing destroys the layout by design.
• Does not convert — scanned PDFs, which contain no text at all. Run OCR first to create a text layer, then convert.

How chapters are detected

EPUB needs a table of contents, and a PDF rarely provides one in machine-readable form. The tool infers structure from typography: text noticeably larger than the body text, often bold and sitting alone on its line, is treated as a heading, with larger sizes becoming higher levels.

This works well on conventionally typeset documents and less well on unusual ones. If your book came out as one enormous chapter, the headings are probably not much larger than the body text — lower the sensitivity. If it fragmented into dozens of tiny chapters, something like a running header is being caught; raise it.

Frequently asked questions