How To: Convert PDFs to ePUB Files for Tablets/Mobiles

If you are an avid reader and have a vast collection of PDF e-books, you can read them using a PDF reader on your tablet. However, if you want to enjoy them on the iBook app on your iPad, the Amazon Kindle or the Android Kindle, or the Aldiko Book Reader app you’ll need your e-book to be in the ePub format.

What Is ePUB?
Just like PDF or Portable Document Format, which is a uniform standard for un-editable documents, ePUB or electronic publication is a free and open e-book standard that has been created by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) for e-book readers and similar devices.

The files with the .EPUB extension support vector images, resizable font size and word wrapping options, making them usable on devices of various screen sizes. The format supports embedded metadata, Digital Rights Management (DRM), and is compressed in size and extremely customizable due to XML support and styling functionalities like CSS and XPath. Moreover, all the files are stored inside a ZIP archive for convenience.

The Tools
The first thing you need are the PDF e-books. You can download free e-books from many sources, like www.free-ebooks.net, but this site requires a VIP membership for the ePub format. Save the PDF files of your choice that you want to read in your target device to move to the next step. We will be using the Calibre e-book management tool to convert the PDF files. To download the tool, visit http://calibre-ebook.com/download and pick the OS version of your choice. We will be using the Windows version for this workshop. Save and execute the .MSI file to set up the program.

Setting It Up
Once Calibre has been installed on your machine, start the application. If the setup wizard isn’t displayed, go to the Preferences option and start the wizard. First, set the folder where you would like the ePub books to be saved. Click ‘Next’ to set a target device; Leave it at ‘Generic’ if you don’t want the file to be device-specific. Click ‘Next’ and finish the wizard settings.

The wizard helps you set a device that helps you create optimized ePub files specifically suiting your device’s settings and form factor

Add Metadata and Convert
Click the ‘Add Books’ button and add all the books that you want to convert. Click the ‘Convert’ button. You will be directed to an edit page, where you can edit every aspect of the final e-book. If you want more details of the book such as authors, ISBN and covers, click the ‘Edit metadata’ button before converting. Click ‘Download metadata and covers options’ to update the file details. Once that is done, proceed to converting the file.

Making The e-Book Tablet-Worthy
The ‘Look and Feel’ settings help you customize the final package based on the target device’s form factor. Next is the Heuristic processing setting. The setting will look for common errors and fix them to suit the device that handles the final output. This setting will help you unwrap text lines, look for unformatted chapter breaks, add scene breaks, remove unwanted hyphenation marks and delete blank lines and other such formatting issues in the e-book. In case you have not set the target device during the setup wizard, you can use the page set up settings to select it. This is a better way to select target devices because you can customize settings as and when you convert the e-book. Here, you can also change page margins based on the size of your device screen. The Structure Detection settings help you set up the XML XPath file, which is similar to a CSS for an HTML page. If you have little knowledge about XPath, it is better to leave the settings untouched.

Along with editing the metadata, you can also generate a cover to identify the e-book in the target device

Tying Up the Loose Ends
The Table of Contents is an amazing feature, as it enables you to create a contents page if it is missing from the original file. Moreover, if you are unsure if the e-book has a contents page, you can create it by enabling the ‘Do not add detected chapters to the Table of Contents’ and ‘Force use of auto-generated Table of Contents’ options. If the book is intended for children and you find some objectionable words or phrases, you can search and replace such terms before you create the ePub book. If you want the PDF to be free of images go to the PDF option and check the ‘No Images’ option. Next, go to the ‘ePUB Output’ option, and set the options as per your requirements. If the final file is larger than a particular limit, it will be automatically split into smaller parts.

Although you have selected the target device, you can further customize the readability of your e-book as you convert to ePub

Happy Reading
Finally, go to the ‘Debug’ option and set a target folder location to monitor the conversion. Click ‘OK’ to convert the file. Depending on the size of your file, the conversation time will vary. Once it is done, you can go ahead and transfer the e-book to your device and enjoy reading your favorite books on the go.