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Show HN: Epub.to – ePub to pdf, mobi, Kindle, and an API
- superdeeda 6y agoI've been using https://www.sendepubtokindle.com/ https://www.sendepubtokindle.com/ to send epubs to my kindle which has been super handy too.
- rhino369 6y agoNice tool. I thought kindle files were mobi? Any difference?
- LiberatedLlama 6y agoThere are a few "kindle formats"; the most basic of which are just mobi files. Generate a mobi file and any kindle should be able to load it fine.
- kemayo 6y agoKindle has jumped around in formats over the years. It's been AZW (which is basically mobi), AZW3, and now KFX. I assume that KFX is what this tool is calling "Kindle".
- nadermx 6y agoIt currently does AZW3 for kindle, but I will add in the sub option to choose from those three formats.
- davidhbolton 6y agoThe ones with DRM are .azw, basically an encrypted .mobi. Calibre is your friend. https://calibre-ebook.com/ https://calibre-ebook.com/
- unicornporn 6y agoAnd (another fun fact) if you want to email EPUBs to your kindle, just make the file extension .png (!?) and it will be automatically converted, without the need for Calibre.
- pricci 6y agoReally!? This is the best tip I've heard in years. This will save me a lot of time when on the go (without access to calibre)
- JadeNB 6y agoAlthough who knows why you'd want to go without Calibre when it's so multi-functional?
- hombre_fatal 6y agoMost people HN would want it since we are power users who like desktop apps. But don’t rob yourself of trying to understand why everyone else doesn’t want to use desktop software to get a book on their Kindle. For example, my girlfriend is an avid ebook reader but couldn’t be less interested in it. “I can see why that could be useful but... no thanks.” We like the smell of our own farts too much sometimes. In this case, in the form of “why don’t people want to use more software to do what you were already doing without it?”
- JadeNB 6y ago> But don’t rob yourself of trying to understand why everyone else doesn’t want to use desktop software to get a book on their Kindle. Yes, that's a good point. I originally had "Why would you want to go without Calibre when it's so multi-functional?", but changed it to "Who knows why you'd want …" in an aim to sound less confrontational. I seem instead to have gone the other way!
- codazoda 6y ago> A file with the .MOBI file extension is used for storing eBooks. It was originally a Mobipocket Reader format but has since been adopted by several different readers as well. Amazon purchased Mobipocket in 2005, and later discontinued the MOBI format in 2011. > The current Kindle formats (AZW3, KF8, and KFX) are based on MOBI and is a proprietary format exclusively used on Kindle devices. And, in fact, you can still open files with the MOBI format directly on your Kindle https://www.howtogeek.com/360419/what-is-a-mobi-file/ https://www.howtogeek.com/360419/what-is-a-mobi-file/ If you want to write a Kindle book, checkout my book, Publish Your eBook by Joel Dare. https://www.amazon.com/Publish-Kindle-write-ebook-software-ebook/dp/B00A4112ZM https://www.amazon.com/Publish-Kindle-write-ebook-software-e...
- zigzaggy 6y agoCan I use this to change my purchased kindle books into ebooks for all devices? I’m somewhat tech literate, but pretty ignorant about e-book file types.
- LiberatedLlama 6y agoSearch for "Apprentice Alf" for a DRM stripping plugin for Calibre. This is how I liberated my kindle library. Once you've stripped the DRM, you can freely convert them to epub.
- kemayo 6y agoYou cannot -- Kindle ebooks are in a format called KFX (or AZW/mobi or AZW3, depending on when you got them), which this tool doesn't support as an input. If you wanted to do that, I'd just use Calibre, which has really comprehensive format conversion abilities: https://calibre-ebook.com https://calibre-ebook.com Most Kindle ebooks have DRM as well, which I think is currently hard to remove -- there's a plugin for calibre that you could try. Some publishers don't apply it, though, so maybe.
- andrewzah 6y agoRemoving drm from .azw3 is easy. [0] All you need is the ID of your kindle, since it's tied to your device. There is also a plugin for Calibre, although I haven't tested this myself. I'm not sure if it requires a device ID or not. [1] [0]: https://alexwlchan.net/2019/08/removing-the-drm-from-my-kindle-books/ https://alexwlchan.net/2019/08/removing-the-drm-from-my-kind... [1]: https://github.com/apprenticeharper/DeDRM_tools/wiki/Exactly-how-to-remove-DRM https://github.com/apprenticeharper/DeDRM_tools/wiki/Exactly...
- amluto 6y agoCalibre is great, but IMO it’s the wrong approach for this particular conversion. Use KindleUnpack instead, which is close to lossless. https://github.com/kevinhendricks/KindleUnpack https://github.com/kevinhendricks/KindleUnpack This is a fantastic way to read books published by Tor on multiple devices. Now if only Tor would sell the ePub files on their website. (Tor eBooks are not DRMed.)
- LiberatedLlama 6y agoI'd think I'll stick with the tried and true `ebook-convert` tool from Calibre, and pandoc. There's no sense uploading your documents to a third party when that's not necessary.
- esher 6y agoThe comments are not mentioning [Pandoc](https://pandoc.org/ https://pandoc.org/) as an alternative yet (missing mobi I think).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- LeoPanthera 6y agoIf you're specifically converting eBooks, Calibre comes with command line conversion tools that produce better results than pandoc.
- radicaldreamer 6y agoIt doesn’t run on iPad or iPhone… which is the niche these sites fill
- simonklitj 6y agoSomeone should write a simple web app to use Docverter on iOS. Or just run a cURL tool or something. https://www.docverter.com https://www.docverter.com
- SecurityLagoon 6y agoI run calibre server on a raspberry pi which allows you to upload files and convert them via the web interface via my phone/tablet. You can even then download the new mobi/azw3 via the kindle browser (although the non JS version on my older paperwhite).
- iamacyborg 6y agoCalibre also has plugins that help ensure stuff like Goodreads works if you’re sending non Kindle books to a Kindle device.
- jowsie 6y agoHow is this monetised?
- rahimnathwani 6y agohttps://epub.to/signup https://epub.to/signup lists plans
- harshreality 6y agoWhy would you convert an epub to pdf? There is no ebook reader, other than kindles (for which the proper conversion would be to kf8), that can't handle epubs.
- ldx1024 6y agoSend my public domain book to my grandma who doesn't know how to handle an epub? Convert it because it is easier to print as a .pdf with my particular setup? There are all kinds of potential use cases for users of differing levels of technical sophistication. Why wouldn't you provide an option to convert to .pdf?
- soapdog 6y agowhen I check the download stats for all my books, PDF downloads are more popular than all other formats. I prefer epubs too, but apparently readers really like PDFs...
- JulianMorrison 6y agoPDFs retain their formatting better and are much more readily accessible across devices, except for the smallest screens.
- Deathmax 6y ago> PDFs retain their formatting better Which is also its downside when formatting is not critical. I want to be able to change the font size and have the text reflow correctly. With PDFs you end up with broken layouts if you don't view it exactly as formatted.
- rualca 6y ago>>I want to be able to change the font size and have the text reflow correctly. With PDFs you end up with broken layouts if you don't view it exactly as formatted. Reflowable books also do a poor job reflowing content. Case in point, the free AWS ebooks on kindle are a god-awful mess whenever they add code snippets, no matter how small. Given the choice, a good fixed format layout beats a bad reflowable layout.
- marvindanig 6y agoNice tool but ack!, yet another this file format to that file format conversion tool. A book is not a file. It never will be. I know half the unixy nutcases won't agree with anything normal but in reality the world will continue to buy dead-tree books because no real consumer believes or wants these stupid files. Or will pay for it. Meh, the trash.
- elyobo 6y agoPreferences vary. I only buy and read ebooks, as they're vastly more convenient and somewhat cheaper into the bargain.
- marvindanig 6y agoYeah, you’re an exception. The market is still massively into paperbacks though, despite the cheapness of files.
- elyobo 6y agoI am, but I'm still a real consumer and I do indeed want these files. > no real consumer believes or wants these stupid files
- SecurityLagoon 6y agoThere is a growing market for ebooks. I have a lot of friends who are not tech literate who prefer buying on their kindle for the convenience of having one small device rather than shelves of paper. Both markets will continue to exist for a long time for different reasons and readers.
- marvindanig 6y ago> ...for the convenience of having one small device rather than shelves of paper. Yeah, that’s why people moved away from cassettes to Youtube. I have a lot of friends who gave their Kindles away and are back into paperbacks and/or the iPads.
- qwerty456127 6y agoI want ePub to FB2. Because FB2 books are rendered with better readable fonts on my PockerBook reader. I have no problems using Calibre or PanDoc for this task though. Obviously the problem emerges when you want to do the job without installing anything.
- eigenvalue 6y agoI have found the best tools for this to be the free Kindle Previewer ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1003018611 https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1003018... ) and Calibre. The Calibre editor is useful for cleaning up messed up EPUB files that don't work in the Kindle Previewer.
- lostlogin 6y agoCalibre runs great in a container too. As always, the Linuxserver image is great. The Docker Package on Synology made this very easy when I was new to Docker some years ago, and it hasn’t been touched since the initial install, it just works. https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-calibre https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-calibre
- fishywang 6y agoShameless plug and this is only loosely related: Over the last holiday season I wrote a backend (written in Go and running on App Engine) to convert http url into epub. The frontend is a telegram bot that sends the epub to your reMarkable account directly, but it also has rest api to download the epub file: https://github.com/fishy/url2epub/blob/main/REST.md https://github.com/fishy/url2epub/blob/main/REST.md
- ozzydave 6y agoRelated to that, I made an app in Glitch to send RSS feeds as ePub to remarkable. It’s great it has an API. https://glitch.com/edit/#!/remarkable-sync-app https://glitch.com/edit/#!/remarkable-sync-app
- jtbayly 6y agoWell, two epubs gave a "something went wrong" when converting to HTML, which is the only output I'm really curious about. I got one conversion to PDF to work, then went back to try html, and now I've got to wait an hour... :(
- arikrak 6y agoI would be interested in a tool that converts a list of html files into a single pdf, with consistent formatting.
- ritonlajoie 6y agoWould you mind to tell us if your paid api service has some success ? Thanks !