EPUB to PDF for tablets and phones
Most PDFs read badly on a tablet for one reason: they are shaped like a sheet of paper and the screen is not. Change the page, not the type.
Read in this tab. Never uploaded. Here's why that's true.
Some characters won't survive this.
This is a fixed-layout EPUB.
Every page is already a picture, usually a comic or a children's book. You'll get those pictures, one per page, and the text options below won't change anything.
More options contents page, bookmarks, page numbers
Working…
This runs on your machine, so the speed is down to your machine. Keep the tab open.
Your PDF is ready
Before you print a hundred pages
- Look at page one first. Open it and check the type size and the margins on screen. Wrong choices are cheap to fix here and expensive to fix at the printer.
- Print two pages, not two hundred. Paper is whiter and type is smaller than a screen suggests. 11pt looks fine on a monitor and reads small on A4.
- Set your printer to actual size. "Fit to page" shrinks everything by a few per cent and undoes the margins you just chose.
Reading it on a tablet or phone
Copy it across however you normally would. If the type looks small, convert again at a smaller page size rather than a larger point size — the page shrinks with it, so the text fills more of the screen.
Something went wrong
- 4:3 · 16:9
- screen-shaped pages
- 0
- pinching required
- 0
- bytes uploaded
The one counter-intuitive thing
If the text is too small on screen, do not increase the type size. Reduce the page size instead.
Here is why. A PDF reader scales the whole page to fit the screen. Set 11pt on A4 and you get roughly 90 characters across a page that is then squeezed onto a 10-inch display, so the type arrives tiny. Set 14pt on that same A4 page and you get 70 characters across a page that is still squeezed to the same size, so each character is only slightly bigger. You have made the book longer and barely improved the reading.
Now set 11pt on a phone-shaped page. That page is a third of the width, so it holds a third of the words, and when it is scaled up to fill the screen, every one of them is three times the size. Same type size, completely different reading experience. The page size is the zoom control.
What to pick
- iPad and most tablets. Tablet screen (4:3), 11pt. Fills the display in portrait with no black bars.
- Phones. Phone screen (16:9), 12pt. A short, narrow page you can read one screenful at a time without a single gesture.
- A tablet you also print from. A5, 11pt. A compromise: paper-proportioned, but half the area of A4, so it reads far better on screen than A4 does.
- Margins. Narrow. Screen margins are wasted space; nobody holds a tablet by the paper.
Turn these on
PDF bookmarks especially. On a screen there is no flicking through with your thumb, so the sidebar outline is how you move around a long document. Apple Books, PDF Expert, Xodo and Acrobat all show it.
The contents page, whose entries are tappable links straight to the chapter.
Page numbers, which cost nothing and are how you find your place again after the app forgets it.
Getting it onto the device
However you normally move a file. AirDrop to an iPad and it offers to open in Books. On Android, copy it into Drive or the device's own storage and open it with whatever PDF reader you like. There is no service in the middle here and no account to make. The file was built in your browser and it is sitting in your downloads folder.
One honest note: if all you want is to read the book, and your device opens EPUBs, read the EPUB. It reflows to your screen and your font, which is better than any PDF can be. Convert when you need what a PDF gives you: a fixed page to cite, an annotation app that takes nothing else, or a file that will still open unchanged in twenty years.
Questions
The text is too small on my tablet. Should I increase the type size?
No. Decrease the page size instead. This is the single most useful thing to know about PDFs on screens. A PDF page is scaled to fit the screen, so making the type bigger makes the page bigger too and the two cancel out exactly. Making the page smaller, at the same type size, means fewer words on the page and each of them larger once it is scaled to fit.
Which page size for an iPad?
Tablet screen (4:3). It matches the shape of the display, so a page fills it with no letterboxing and no pinching. A5 is the next best thing if you want something that also prints sensibly.
And for a phone?
Phone screen (16:9), at 12 or 14pt. A phone-shaped page holds very little text, which is the point: it means you never zoom. Expect three or four times as many pages as A4, which costs nothing since you are not printing it.
Should I just read the EPUB instead?
Honestly, usually yes. An EPUB reflows to your screen and your chosen font, which is strictly better for reading. Convert to PDF when you need something a PDF gives you: fixed page numbers to cite, annotation in an app that only takes PDFs, a file to hand to someone whose device will not open an EPUB, or a format you are confident will still open in twenty years.
Do the bookmarks work on a tablet?
Yes. Apple Books, Adobe Acrobat, PDF Expert, Xodo and Google Drive all show the PDF outline, usually behind a contents or bookmarks button. The links on the generated contents page work too.