ePub Format

Writable

text

The EPUB family of standards defines a distribution and interchange format for digital publications and documents. The EPUB format, short for "electronic publications", provides a means of representing, packaging, and encoding structured and semantically enhanced Web content — including HTML, CSS, SVG and other resources — for distribution in a single‐file container. The container file is based on the ZIP format and defined in the Open Container Format (OCF). EPUB is an openly documented standard. It has been developed and maintained under the auspices of a sequence of entities. The version of EPUB is identified in the version attribute of the root <package> element in the .opf file, which can be found when the contents of the .epub file is "unzipped", i.e., extracted from the ZIP archive into its component files. The official way to find the .opf file is through the mandatory META-INF/container.xml file. If the EPUB container has a single EPUB Package, this will often be, by convention rather than requirement, in a directory named "EPUB" or "OEBPS." The version attribute for packages complying with all EPUB 3.x specifications is "3.0" and for EPUB 2.x specifications is "2.0".

Identify it

Extensions	`.epub`
MIME types	`application/epub+zip`
Signatures	`504b0304` at byte 0 (ePub) `504b03040a000200` at byte 0
PRONOM	`fmt/483`
Wikidata	`Q27196933Q475488`
Library of Congress	`fdd000310fdd000308`

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Open it

eXeLearningOpen sourcewrites · GNU Lesser General Public License
PandocOpen sourcereads and writes · GPL-2.0-or-later
Q747793Open sourcereads and writes · GNU General Public License, version 3.0
anydocOpen sourcereads · MIT License
Apache TikaOpen sourcereads · Apache Software License 2.0
ExifToolOpen sourcereads · Artistic License / GNU General Public License, version 1.0 or later
FBReaderOpen sourcereads · GNU General Public License
JHOVEOpen sourcereads · GNU Lesser General Public License
LucifoxOpen sourcereads · GNU General Public License, version 3.0
MuPDFOpen sourcereads · GNU Affero General Public License, version 3.0 or later
OkularOpen sourcereads · GNU General Public License, version 2.0
PandocOpen sourcereads · GNU General Public License, version 2.0
PhotoRecOpen sourcereads · GNU General Public License
Q131382357Open sourcereads · GNU General Public License, version 2.0
Q479808Open sourcereads · GNU General Public License, version 3.0
Thorium ReaderOpen sourcereads · 3-clause BSD License
ABBYY FineReader 11writes · end-user license agreement
Adobe InDesignwrites · proprietary license
Adobe RoboHelpwrites
Booktypewrites
Google Docswrites
Google Docswrites · proprietary license
HelpNDocwrites
iBooks Authorwrites
IStudio Publisherwrites
Oxygen XML Editorwrites · proprietary license
PagePluswrites
Pageswrites
Playwritewrites
Q1165026reads and writes
QuarkXPresswrites · proprietary license
Readeckwrites
Scrivenerwrites
TextMakerwrites
Adobe Digital Editionsreads · freeware
Aldikoreads
Apple Booksreads · end-user license agreement
Blioreads
Bluefire Readerreads
Bookwormreads

And 18 more in the JSON record.

Convert it

To	With	Fidelity	Command and losses
Hypertext Markup Language	Pandoc	Partial	`pandoc -f epub -t html in.epub -o out.html` Document structure is kept; layout, styles and unsupported elements are lost.
Markdown	Pandoc	Partial	`pandoc -f epub -t markdown in.epub -o out.md` Document structure is kept; layout, styles and unsupported elements are lost.
Office Open XML Wordprocessing Document, ECMA-376 1st Edition	Pandoc	Partial	`pandoc -f epub -t docx in.epub -o out.docx` Document structure is kept; layout, styles and unsupported elements are lost.
OpenDocument	Pandoc	Partial	`pandoc -f epub -t odt in.epub -o out.odt` Document structure is kept; layout, styles and unsupported elements are lost.
Plain Text File	Pandoc	Partial	`pandoc -f epub -t plain in.epub -o out.txt` Text only: all formatting is dropped.

Sources

From Converters (FFmpeg, ImageMagick, Pandoc, LibreOffice), Just Solve the File Format Problem (File Formats Wiki), PRONOM, Wikidata. Updated 2026-10-24.

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