EPUB to TXT
Extract the text of an EPUB ebook in chapter order into a clean, unformatted UTF-8 .txt file
Your files stay with you. Conversion happens inside the browser; no file is ever uploaded to a server.
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How it works
An EPUB is a package of chapter files, style sheets and images, so to use the words anywhere else you first need them as plain text. Select the EPUB file and press Convert to TXT. The tool reads the book's package file, takes the chapters in their reading order and strips the formatting from each one: every paragraph becomes one line, paragraphs are separated by one blank line and chapters by two, and list items start with "- ". Example: a 24-chapter novel of about 90,000 words becomes a .txt file of roughly 550 KB, and the result line reads something like "24 chapters · 90,412 words". The file is UTF-8, so curly quotes, dashes and accented names display correctly in any program. You can feed the text to a text-to-speech app, send it to a Kindle with Send to Kindle, or give it to an AI tool for a summary. Copy-protected (DRM) books cannot be opened, and the tool says so plainly.
This tool is also known as epub to txt, convert epub to text, epub to plain text, extract text from epub, epub text extractor, ebook to txt.
What is EPUB?
EPUB is the standard ebook format. It is really a ZIP package holding one web page (XHTML) per chapter, style sheets, images and a package file (OPF) that sets the reading order. That is why the text arrives wrapped in fonts and layout; converting to plain text throws those layers away and keeps only the words.
What is UTF-8 plain text (TXT)?
TXT is the simplest file type there is: no bold, italics, fonts or images, only characters and line breaks. UTF-8 is the way those characters are stored as bytes; it covers every language's letters plus curly quotes and dashes, and every text editor, phone and AI tool today reads it correctly without any setting.
What is the difference between EPUB and TXT?
An EPUB is a reading package: it carries chapter breaks, heading styles, a cover, images and pages that reflow to the reader's font size, and it needs an ebook app to open. A TXT is only the words; it opens in any program, is the easiest format to search and copy, and is very small, but the cover, images and formatting are lost. Use EPUB to read the book and TXT to work with its text.
How the text is laid out
Chapters follow the reading order in the book's package file, not the alphabetical order of file names. Headings sit on their own line, bulleted lists start with "- ", table cells are separated by tabs, and preformatted passages such as poetry or code keep their line breaks.
Invisible characters are cleaned up: a non-breaking space ( ) becomes a normal space and the soft hyphen (­) that ebooks insert for line breaking is removed. Left in, a search for "reading" would miss "read-ing" and a text-to-speech voice could split the word in two.
Which books cannot be converted?
Most purchased ebooks are copy-protected (DRM); their content is encrypted and this tool cannot open it, nor does it try. DRM-free books, titles from public-domain libraries such as Project Gutenberg and EPUBs you created yourself convert without trouble.
Image-only books such as comics or picture books carry no text to extract, and the tool tells you so. Kindle formats (.azw, .azw3, .mobi) are not EPUB and are not accepted here.
Frequently asked questions
How do I convert EPUB to TXT?
Select the EPUB file on this page and press Convert to TXT. All chapters are collected in reading order into one UTF-8 .txt file, and the book is never uploaded anywhere.
How can I copy all the text from an EPUB?
Ebook apps often let you copy only a few pages at a time. Convert the book to TXT here and the whole text is in one file; open it in a text editor and copy as much as you need.
Which format should I give an AI tool to summarize a book?
Plain text (TXT) is the safest choice: AI tools read .txt files directly without markup getting in the way. Very long books may exceed the amount of text a tool can read at once; in that case give it the text chapter by chapter.
Why do I get a copy-protection error?
The book is encrypted with the seller's DRM. That protection is only removed inside the seller's own app, and this tool cannot read encrypted content. A DRM-free copy converts without problems.