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Old 05-21-2026, 10:29 AM   #1
cmgam
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PDF to EPUB
Hi

This question has probably already been asked and answered, but I couldn't find it. How do I convert PDF books to EPUB without ending up with a garbled and unreadable file?
Thanks in advance
Regards
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Old 05-21-2026, 11:09 AM   #2
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That question has been asked many times for many years and the short answer has always been that you can't.
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Old 05-21-2026, 11:27 AM   #3
bcholfin
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Originally Posted by cmgam View Post
Hi

This question has probably already been asked and answered, but I couldn't find it. How do I convert PDF books to EPUB without ending up with a garbled and unreadable file?
Thanks in advance
Regards
You don't. You pay a conversion service. As noted above, it is a PITA to do manually. It is possible, I've had it done for some of our old backlist, but really, it is not DIY.
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Old 05-21-2026, 02:47 PM   #4
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In order to make sure there are no errors and the formatting is correct, once you've done the conversion and any semi-auto cleanup, you have to A/B compare the ePub to the PDF. That's the only way to do it.
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Old 05-21-2026, 06:52 PM   #5
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Try converting the PDF to DOCX with a recent version of MS Word, and then convert the DOCX to EPUB - simplest way to do that is via calibre.

BR
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Old 05-21-2026, 07:41 PM   #6
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Depends if the pdf is image based or has a text layer.
https://nlsblog.org/2020/06/12/three-types-of-pdfs/

You could OCR it.
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Old 05-22-2026, 10:12 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Karellen View Post
Depends if the pdf is image based or has a text layer.
https://nlsblog.org/2020/06/12/three-types-of-pdfs/

You could OCR it.
Why OCR? You still have to A/b compare to make sure it's fully correct. And you also have to fix any formatting issues from the conversation as well as textual errors. The OCR is one more step that can be avoided.
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Old 05-23-2026, 09:40 AM   #8
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To be honest, I'd rather make new epubs with raw text than correct badly auto generate ones.
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Old 05-23-2026, 11:38 AM   #9
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To be honest, I'd rather make new epubs with raw text than correct badly auto generate ones.
That would be easier if the text was in good shape.
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Old 05-23-2026, 12:06 PM   #10
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That would be easier if the text was in good shape.
True, last time I got some garbage text, cleaning it took about 1.5h and making epub take 20min.
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Old 05-26-2026, 09:03 PM   #11
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The last time I dealt with an ebook that had the pages as images and a text layer for searching, it turned out to be easier to OCR the images than to attempt to work with the text layers. The OCR used to generate the text layer was pretty primitive and, I suspect, the original page images without any cleanup were used.
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Old Yesterday, 06:26 AM   #12
John F
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For the PDF novels I've tried (a very small sample size of 2), I've been satisfied (I don't need perfection) with the results using calibre PDF to EPUB conversion.
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