EPUB to PDF Converter

EPUB is the most common ebook format outside Amazon's store. Public domain libraries, independent authors, publishers' review copies and many universities hand out books as .epub files, and phones and e-readers open them well. Laptops, office printers and plenty of study tools do not. A PDF opens in every browser and every operating system's built-in viewer, so it is the easier copy to print, mark up in class or attach to an email.

Fixed pages also help when people need to talk about the same passage. In an ebook, page 40 on one reader is page 63 on another, because each app lays the text out differently. Once the book is a PDF, everyone has the same page 40, which is why reading groups, teachers and reviewers often ask for one.

What you give up is the flexibility. A PDF will not reflow on a small phone screen, the font size cannot be raised without zooming, and night mode in an ebook app does not apply. Keep the EPUB for reading on the go, and use the PDF where fixed pages matter.

An EPUB is a ZIP package of web pages, style sheets, pictures and fonts, plus a file that lists the reading order and the table of contents. The converter follows that reading order chapter by chapter, applies the book's own styles and lays the text out on A5 pages with the margins left as the book defines them. Headings, italics, block quotes, lists, tables and footnotes come through, and pictures are placed where they appear in the text.

The table of contents becomes the PDF's bookmark outline, and links inside the book, such as footnote references and cross-references, stay clickable. Embedded fonts are used when the book includes them; otherwise a standard book font is substituted and embedded in the PDF. Audio and video clips that some EPUB 3 books contain cannot play in a PDF and are left out.

Large books convert fine, but they make large PDFs when they are full of photographs, because every picture is kept at the resolution stored in the EPUB. If the result is too heavy to email, lower Image quality under Advanced settings and convert again, or run the PDF through Compress PDF. A text-only novel stays small either way. Up to 20 books can go into one batch, each with its own PDF and the original file name.

EPUB was created by the International Digital Publishing Forum, which published EPUB 3.0 in 2011. The forum later merged into the W3C, and the current version, EPUB 3.3, became a W3C Recommendation in 2023. Because the format is built on HTML and CSS, its content is well described and converts predictably to a page format such as PDF.

Amazon's Kindle uses its own formats instead. If the book is meant for a Kindle rather than for print, EPUB to MOBI on the Ebook Converter page is the better route, because it keeps the text reflowable.

The page size decides how the book feels on paper or on screen. Four choices cover nearly every case, and you can change it under Page size before converting. Margins follow the book's style sheet unless you set Margins under Page layout yourself.