Convert a PDF into an eBook (EPUB)
Reading a PDF on an e-reader is a pain: pages don't fit the screen and the text ends up tiny. Converting it to EPUB lets the text reflow and lets you pick the font size.
Step by step
- In Pro Arsenal, choose PDF ➔ eBook.
- Pick or drop a PDF.
- Press Create eBook. You'll see "Extracting text from PDF…" and then "Building eBook (EPUB)…".
- An
.epubfile with the same name as your PDF downloads.
Getting it onto your reader
- Kobo, PocketBook and most readers: connect the reader by USB and copy the
.epubinto its storage. - Kindle: current Kindles accept EPUB through Amazon's Send to Kindle service, which converts it to their format.
- Phone or tablet: open it with Apple Books, Google Play Books or any EPUB reading app.
Which PDFs work
The tool reads the text of the PDF with Mozilla's pdf.js library. It works well with documents created on a computer: notes exported from Word, articles, reports or digital books.
Scanned PDFs don't work. If the PDF is a photo of each page (which is what scanning produces), it contains images, not text. In that case the tool tells you it found no readable text. You'd first need to run it through a text-recognition (OCR) program.
What the book looks like
- Each page of the PDF becomes a section titled "Page 1", "Page 2"…, so you can keep your bearings against the original.
- Line breaks from the text are kept; you choose the font size on your reader.
- Images, complex tables, multiple columns and formulas aren't reproduced as-is: the EPUB holds the text. In two-column documents the reading order may get mixed up.
- The book is tagged with the language you have selected on the site (English or Spanish) and uses the file name as its title.
Privacy
Both reading the PDF and building the EPUB happen in your browser. The document is never uploaded to a server — which matters if you're converting private notes or work documents.