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How to Convert EPUB to PDF using Calibre

I’m not exactly the voracious reader but nonetheless I make the point of reading small bits of a book every day when I can. I almost exclusively read all my books from my computer since the bulk of them are internet sourced.

That means I encounter different kinds of e-book formats, but usually it tends to be either PDF or EPUB. I prefer the former thanks to its flexibility and software support. With flexibility, I mean it allows me to highlight, add notes and do a lot of other stuff that I can’t simply accomplish with the EPUB format.

So the other day I found myself in a situation where I wanted to start a book but it was in EPUB format. I tried using a couple of e-book readers (SumatraPDF, FBReader & Ice Cream Reader) before realizing it was just impossible for me to read without making some notes.

As a result, I began my search for ways to convert the EPUB in question to PDF and that’s when I realized I had Calibre Portable from years back that could convert various E-Book formats.

08/10/2020 UPDATE: Since writing this post I’ve come across a two EPUB readers that support annotations. On Windows you can highlight text in EPUBs and export them using Bluefire Reader. On Linux you can try Foliate which does the same and is more feature packed. Note however that the annotations are not embedded into the EPUB as it is the case with PDFs.

Calibre EPUB to PDF Converter

  1. If you haven’t yet installed Calibre, you can get it from the official download page here. It cross-platform (Windows, Linux & MacOS) plus there’s a portable if you prefer to carry it around in a portable storage.
  2. Launch Calibre and add your EPUB from the Add Books icon in the toolbar. Calibre will copy the EPUB into the default library location (the one you set when installing; you can change it by clicking on the Books icon in the toolbar) and then add it to the library.
  3. From the library, right-click the EPUB in question and select Convert books then Convert individually.
    A screenshots of Calibre book menu options.
  4. If you wish to convert many EPUBs in bulk, select all of them first, then right-click and select Convert books > Bulk convert.
  5. Doing that will launch the Convert window where we need to specify the desired output settings. On your top right, select the Output format (PDF) from the drop-down list. If you need to change any metadata (title, author etc.) do it in this page.
    A screenshot of Calibre's book converter window.
  6. You can also change (or add if it’s not available) the cover which is what will be used for the first page of the PDF.
  7. After you’re done configuring the metadata switch to the PDF Output page.

Configure the PDF OutPut

Before changing anything in the PDF output page, first consider on what device you intend to read the PDF on. If it’s on an e-book reader (Kindle, iPad, tablet etc.) then it’s probably wise that you choose a device specific profile so that everything, from page sizes to margins, is taken care of for you.

On the other hand, if you intend to read in on a computer then use the Default Profile which optimizes the output for larger displays, specifically a resolution of 1600×1200 in the latest Calibre version.

This way the PDF will look good on your device, and you won’t have to resort to zooming to fit the PDF on the display.

To do this, go to the Page Setup page and in the output profile select your Device’s profile.

An image of Calibre's device output profiles.

Then go back to the PDF Output page and tick the option Use the paper size set in output profile.

On the other hand, if you intend to view the PDF on a desktop or any other large display, you can leave the paper size at Letter or set it to A4. You can also choose to pick one of the other predefined profiles or even set a custom size in millimetres (mm) [e.g. 209.9×297].

An image of Calibre's PDF output settings.

You can also change the paper margins, though the default (72.0 pts) looks good with the letter size.

Similarly, if you wish to change the font into something else, you can do it from here.

If you want to add Footers and Headers you can do that also from here. I haven’t used this feature yet, but I suggest you read the Documentation link provided there to figure out how to use.

It however does provide some predefined templates (_PAGENUM_, _TITLE_, _AUTHOR_ and _SECTION_) which should cater for most people’s needs.

At this point, you’ll want to output it first to see how it looks before making any more adjustments. To do that, click the OK button and wait for the job to finish.

When it’s done, check the output in the library location or right-click the EPUB and choose Open containing folder. You should find the PDF there.

Adjust Settings to Get Decent Looking PDFs

If you’re not happy with the results you can adjust some more settings:

1. First, you may want to add or adjust the spacing between the paragraphs, which I find makes the PDF look nicer and more readable.

To do that, go to the Look & Feel page then Layout tab and add a tick on Insert blank line between paragraphs. You can also customize the size of the space though the default 0.5em should be enough.

A screenshot of the layout settings in Calibre's book converter.

2. In the Text tab you can also adjust the justification of the text (left, justify), smarten the punctuations (convert them to their fancy look i.e. ” ” to “ ”), unsmarten (does the opposite i.e. “ ” to ” “) and Transliterate Unicode characters to ASCII (i.e. if it has none-ascii characters in Russian, Japanese, Chinese etc.).

26/04/2021 Update: I’ve noticed that in some converted PDFs a few letters on the right margin get cut-ff when using the original or justify justifications. Switching to the left justification resolves the issue, though I’ve since noticed the issue doesn’t pop up in the latest Calibre version (5.16.1)

3. You can also enable heuristic processing in the Heuristic Processing page which basically tries to fix some common errors it may find in an e-book rather than you doing it by yourself.

The results however vary and in some cases it may actually worsen the output. Try using it if your conversion turns out badly but you don’t have the time to tweak the individual settings.

4. By default, Calibre will create bookmarks for your PDF even if the EPUB doesn’t have. If you need to adjust the Bookmark settings, go to Table of Contents page.

For instance, if you don’t want it to use the bookmarks in the EPUB (which could be wrong, incomplete) tick the option Force use of auto-generated Table of Contents so that it creates a new one for you.

A screenshot of the table of contents settings in Calibre's converter.

5. Some EPUBs contain footnotes which are referenced inside the paragraphs by numbered links that allow you to jump to a specific footnote conveniently. Most EPUB to PDF converters don’t usually carry over these type of links to the converted PDF and this had been the case with old Calibre versions too. The latest versions however now supports the feature and I can confirm it works wonderfully.

I hope with this you can now finally convert your EPUBs into some decent PDFs. Many thanks to Kovid Goyal the developer of Calibre (and its contributors) for creating and giving away for free such an incredibly useful software.

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2 Comments

    1. That’s strange, my version has the icon as the very first in the toolbar. You can, however, also add books by dragging and dropping them inside the Calibre window.

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Kelvin Kathia

Kelvin Kathia is a writer that's passionate about sharing solutions to everyday tech problems. He's the founder and editor of Journey Bytes, a tech blog and web design agency. Feel free to leave him comments or questions regarding this post, or by leaving him a message on the contact page. If you found his content helpful, a donation is much appreciated.