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EPUB to Markdown: Convert EPUB eBooks to Markdown Online

Convert EPUB ebooks to Markdown online: extract chapters cleanly for Obsidian, notes, or republishing. The converter processes the entire EPUB at once.

Updated 2026-09-11

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Features

  • Convert EPUB 2 and EPUB 3 eBooks to clean Markdown
  • Preserve headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, and links
  • Extract book metadata (title, author, language, description)
  • Full-text Markdown preview before downloading
  • One-click copy entire book to clipboard
  • Download as .md file with correct filename
  • Support drag and drop file open
  • Handle DRM-protected files with clear error messages

How to Use

  1. 1Click the drop area or drag an .epub file into the browser.
  2. 2The tool automatically converts the EPUB to Markdown.
  3. 3Preview the full Markdown output in the text panel.
  4. 4Click 'Copy All' to copy the Markdown to your clipboard.
  5. 5Click 'Save' to save the Markdown as a .md file.
  6. 6Open a different file at any time using the open button in the toolbar.
  7. 7Use this to extract eBook text for note-taking, annotation, or republishing.
  8. 8Convert eBooks to Markdown for importing into static site generators like Hugo, Jekyll, or Obsidian.
  9. 9Extract chapters for blog posts by copying specific sections from the preview.
  10. 10Use the converted Markdown as input for LLMs and text analysis pipelines.

Frequently Asked Questions

What EPUB formats are supported?

The tool supports both EPUB 2 (with NCX navigation) and EPUB 3 (with nav.xhtml) formats. It reads XHTML content, extracts text with headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, links, and inline formatting.

Can I select specific chapters?

The current version converts the entire EPUB to Markdown at once. You can copy or save the full output. For chapter-specific extraction, copy the relevant section from the preview.

Does this preserve formatting?

Yes. Headings (H1-H6), bold, italic, links, ordered and unordered lists, blockquotes, tables with alignment, and fenced code blocks are all converted to their Markdown equivalents.

What about images in the EPUB?

Images are referenced with Markdown image syntax ![alt](src) using the original relative paths from the EPUB. They are not embedded as base64.

How do I convert EPUB to Markdown with pandoc or Calibre?

pandoc does it with a single command: pandoc input.epub -t gfm -o output.md. Calibre users can run ebook-convert input.epub output.md instead. In Python, the markitdown library (the same engine used here) converts EPUBs in a few lines. If you prefer not to install anything, this tool produces the same result directly in the browser.

Can I import the Markdown output into Obsidian?

Yes, save the .md file inside your Obsidian vault and it is ready to read and link. One caveat: images are referenced by their original relative paths, so if the book contains images, export the EPUB's image folder next to the .md file or the images will show as broken links. For pure-text notes it works out of the box.

What if my EPUB has DRM protection?

DRM-protected EPUBs cannot be converted. You will see a clear error message indicating the file is protected. Only standard, unprotected EPUB files work.

Can I convert multiple EPUBs at once?

Currently the tool processes one EPUB at a time. Open a new file to convert another one; the previous result will be replaced.

Can I convert Markdown back to EPUB (the reverse direction)?

No. This tool converts EPUB to Markdown only. To go the other way (Markdown to EPUB), use pandoc (pandoc input.md -o output.epub), Calibre's ebook-convert, or a dedicated markdown-to-EPUB converter. Different directions need different tools; pick the one that matches the file you have.

What is the difference between EPUB and PDF conversion?

EPUB is a structured XML-based format with semantic markup, so the tool can extract clean headings, lists, and tables. PDF conversion often produces messy text with broken formatting because PDF is a layout format, not a semantic one.

Can I use the Markdown output for LLMs?

Yes. Markdown is one of the best formats for LLM text analysis pipelines. The clean structure helps models understand document hierarchy, making it ideal for summarization, question answering, and RAG applications. A rough planning rule: 1 token ≈ 0.75 English words (fewer for Chinese), so a 10,000-word book is roughly 13,000 tokens of context.

How accurate is the chapter structure?

The tool uses the EPUB's NCX or nav.xhtml table of contents for chapter boundaries. If the EPUB has a well-structured TOC, the output will match the original book. EPUBs without proper navigation may produce less structured output.

Why is my Markdown output messy?

EPUBs carry CSS-driven layouts (two-column text, floating sidebars, footnotes, drop caps), and Markdown is a linear text format that cannot express those. The converter keeps headings, paragraphs, lists, and links, and flattens everything else into reading order. If a book relies heavily on layout (textbooks, magazines), the Markdown will look plain; for such books, convert to PDF instead or keep the EPUB. Messy output is expected for complex layouts, not a bug.

Why is the conversion slow for large EPUBs?

Large EPUBs (full novels, image-heavy books) can take several seconds: the browser must unzip the archive, parse every XHTML chapter, and flatten the content, all locally on your device, so speed depends on your hardware. A few seconds for a full novel is normal. This epub to markdown converter does everything in the browser with no upload, so the only trade-off for that privacy is local processing time.

How big will the Markdown output file be?

It depends on the book's text volume: a plain-text novel converts to tens to a few hundred KB. Books with many tables or code blocks can be larger. Because the output is plain text, it is usually much smaller than the original EPUB, which also stores CSS, images, and fonts.

Is this converter available as an open-source library on GitHub?

The conversion engine used here is markitdown, an open-source Python library (MIT license) on GitHub; pip install markitdown lets you convert EPUBs from your own scripts. Pandoc and Calibre are also open source and do the same job from the command line. This page is the no-install wrapper around the same approach, so the output matches what those tools produce.

Can I convert .mobi or .azw3 Kindle files instead?

No. This tool only accepts .epub files. If your book is in a Kindle format, convert it to EPUB first with Calibre (open the file, then Convert Books > EPUB) and open the result here. DRM-protected Kindle files can only be converted by their owner after de-DRM, which this site cannot and will not do.

The output contains garbled characters. Did the conversion break something?

Almost always an encoding issue inside the source file: an EPUB whose chapters are saved in GBK or another legacy encoding, or corrupted character entities, shows up as mojibake in the Markdown. First re-open the EPUB (a fresh parse can fix a truncated read), then check the same passage in a reader; if it looks broken there too, the source file is bad and only a Calibre re-export will help. This tool converts text as-is; it does not re-encode.

I closed the tab mid-conversion on a large file. Is the original damaged?

No. Everything runs in your browser's memory: closing the page cancels the conversion but never touches the original file on disk. Just open the EPUB again and reconvert: it takes the same few seconds as before. Nothing is uploaded or stored, so there is no partial state to clean up.