EPUB to TXT Converter

Q: Can I turn the TXT back into an e-book later?

Yes, with [TXT to EPUB](/txt-to-epub), but formatting removed now will not come back. Keep the original EPUB if you may want italics, images or the cover again.

Strip an EPUB down to its words. The TXT file has every paragraph and chapter heading in reading order and nothing else, ready for a text editor, a screen reader, a word counter or a script.

or drop EPUB, MOBI, AZW … files here ·

Max 95 MB per file· Up to 20 files· Deleted after 30 minutes

Output

Convert to

Reading device

Files are processed on our servers and deleted after 30 minutes.

How to use this tool

1
Add the EPUB
Upload up to 20 DRM-free .epub files of up to 95 MB each. Every book becomes one .txt file.
2
Leave the text settings
This page turns Cover to No cover, switches off Table of contents and turns on Remove extra metadata, so the file starts with the first line of the book.
3
Convert to TXT
Press Convert to TXT and open the file in any editor. Books and text files are removed from our server after 30 minutes.

What EPUB to TXT keeps and what it removes

Kept

All body text in reading order
Chapter headings as their own lines
Paragraph breaks
Footnote and endnote text
Every language and script

Removed

Bold, italics and font sizes
Images, cover and illustrations
Tables as grids (cells become lines)
Links and the clickable contents list
Publisher metadata

Changed

Lists become lines with their bullets as characters
Scene breaks become blank lines
Smart quotes stay smart in UTF-8
Hyphenation is not added

An EPUB is a ZIP archive holding XHTML chapter files, CSS, images, fonts and an OPF package file that lists the chapters in reading order. The EPUB 3 standard, published by the International Digital Publishing Forum in 2011 and maintained by the W3C since 2017, describes how those parts fit together. Plain text has none of that structure: it is a run of characters with line breaks.

So the converter walks the spine in the order the OPF gives, reads each chapter, turns block elements such as paragraphs and headings into lines, and discards tags, styles and images. That is roughly what Calibre does with its TXT output, and what you would get by unzipping the EPUB and copying every chapter out of a browser, without the hours of cleanup.

Limits for EPUB to TXT

EPUB files per upload: 20
largest EPUB accepted: 95 MB
store-protected books are refused: DRM-free
until files are deleted: 30 min

EPUB

Electronic Publication

EPUB is the open ebook standard, first published by the International Digital Publishing Forum in 2007 and now maintained by the W3C. It packages XHTML, CSS, images and metadata in a ZIP file, so text reflows to fit any screen size and font setting. EPUB 3 adds audio, video, fixed layouts and accessibility features. Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play Books and most reading apps open EPUB, and Kindle accepts it through Send to Kindle.

Compression: –
Transparency: –
Animation: –
Introduced: 2007 · IDPF (now W3C)

EPUB converter

TXT

Plain text

A TXT file contains only plain characters with no formatting, fonts, images or layout. Modern text files are usually encoded in UTF-8, which covers every language, though older files may use other encodings and show garbled characters. Plain text is tiny, never becomes obsolete and opens on every device, from phones to servers. It cannot hold bold text, tables or pictures, so structure must be expressed with spacing or simple markup.

Compression: –
Transparency: –
Animation: –
Introduced: –

TXT converter

People turn EPUB into TXT to get the bare words for searching, word counts, text-to-speech, translation tools or text analysis, which choke on the XHTML, CSS and ZIP packaging of an e-book.

What people do with an EPUB converted to text

Word and character counts

Writers and translators paste the TXT into a word counter or spreadsheet to quote a fee or check a manuscript's length, without markup inflating the number.

Listening with text-to-speech

Older screen readers, TTS apps and voice tools read plain text without stumbling over hidden markup or announcing image names.

Searching and analysis

Researchers load books into grep, Python or corpus tools such as AntConc, which expect plain text and UTF-8.

Reading on very simple devices

Old phones, MP3 players with text viewers and basic e-ink readers often open TXT when they open nothing else. A Kindle reads TXT copied over USB as well.

EPUB to TXT questions

Which text encoding does the TXT file use?

UTF-8, so curly quotes, em dashes, accented letters and non-Latin scripts come out correctly. Notepad on Windows 10 and later, TextEdit and every code editor open UTF-8 without setup; very old Windows tools may show odd characters for punctuation.

How are chapters separated in the text file?

Each chapter starts on a new line after a blank gap, with its heading as a line of its own. That makes chapters easy to find with a search for the heading text, or to split with a short script.

What happens to footnotes?

Footnote text is kept, but the link between the marker and the note is not, because plain text has no links. Notes usually appear at the end of their chapter or the end of the book, wherever the EPUB stored them.

Can I turn the TXT back into an e-book later?

Yes, with TXT to EPUB, but formatting removed now will not come back. Keep the original EPUB if you may want italics, images or the cover again.

Is there a quicker way to get plain text of a classic novel?

There is no need. Project Gutenberg already offers most titles as plain UTF-8 text alongside the EPUB. This converter is for EPUBs that have no text version, such as indie books or your own drafts.

Why is my TXT almost empty?

The EPUB probably stores its pages as images, which is common for comics, picture books and scanned books. Plain text cannot hold images and the converter does not read text out of pictures, so only captions or headings remain.