Convert EPUB to Markdown

Why convert EPUB to Markdown?

• Convert eBooks into editable Markdown for annotation
• Import book content into note-taking apps like Obsidian
• Extract chapters for summarization with AI tools

How an EPUB becomes Markdown

An EPUB file is essentially a zipped website: a series of XHTML chapter files plus a spine that defines reading order. The converter walks that spine chapter by chapter and converts each one's HTML to Markdown — chapter titles become headings, emphasis and links are preserved, and the book comes out as one continuous, correctly-ordered document instead of a folder of markup files.

Because chapters map to heading sections, the output keeps the book's natural structure. That matters later: notes apps, static sites, and AI tools all navigate the converted book by its chapter headings.

The honest limitations

DRM-protected EPUBs can't be converted — books bought from stores that apply DRM (most Kindle, Kobo, and Apple Books titles) are encrypted, and this tool doesn't and won't strip DRM. DRM-free EPUBs — public-domain classics, technical books from publishers like O'Reilly, self-published titles, your own manuscripts — convert perfectly. Beyond that: images and covers are dropped, fixed-layout EPUBs (children's books, comics) extract poorly because their content is visual, and footnotes convert as inline links.

Books are converted and immediately discarded — never stored. Free handles EPUBs up to 25MB (most novels are 1–5MB); Pro raises the limit to 100MB.

Books as AI-readable sources

Converting a book to Markdown is the cleanest way to get it into an AI workflow: upload chapters to NotebookLM as sources, ask Claude for a chapter-by-chapter summary, or chunk the book along heading boundaries for a RAG pipeline. For long books, split the output by chapter before feeding it to a model — context windows are large but not infinite, and chapter-sized chunks give better answers.

Example: what the Markdown output looks like

A chapter opening converts to:

## Chapter 3 — The Craft of Rewriting

The first draft exists to be wrong. Its job is not to be good;
its job is to *exist*, so the real work can begin.

Rewriting is where the book is actually written. As [Zinsser
argues](https://example.com/on-writing-well), clarity is the
product of revision, not inspiration.

Frequently asked questions

Other formats you can convert

• Convert PDF to Markdown
• Convert Word (DOCX) to Markdown
• Convert PowerPoint (PPTX) to Markdown
• Convert Excel (XLSX) to Markdown
• Convert HTML to Markdown
• Convert CSV to Markdown
• Convert JSON to Markdown
• Convert XML to Markdown
• Convert Images (JPG/PNG) to Markdown