EPUB, MOBI and AZW3 to PDF: e-books can now be scanned too

E-books are great on a phone or a Kindle. They are less great when you need the same pages as a PDF: to print a few chapters, to send reading material to someone who has no e-book app, or to upload to a system that only accepts PDF.

Look Scanned can now open e-books directly. Choose the file, and the book is laid out page by page in your browser. Then you add the scan effect and download a PDF that looks like it came off a real scanner.

Which e-book files work?

EPUB is the format most e-book stores and libraries use. MOBI and AZW3 are Amazon's Kindle formats. FB2 is common for e-books in Russian and other Eastern European languages. CBZ is a comic: just a ZIP file full of page images.

What will the PDF look like?

An e-book doesn't have fixed pages. Its text rewraps to fit whatever screen you read it on, which is why the same book has a different number of pages on a phone and on a tablet.

Before it can be scanned, the book needs real pages, so Look Scanned lays it out on A4 paper:

• Each chapter starts on a new page.
• Headings, paragraphs, images and the book's own styling come along.
• Page breaks won't match your e-reader, and that's expected.

Comics work differently. Each image in a CBZ file becomes one page, in file name order, so page2 comes before page10.

How to turn an e-book into a scanned PDF

1. Open the page for your format: EPUB, Kindle MOBI/AZW3, FB2 or CBZ. Any of these pages will open any of the formats above.
2. Select your book and wait a moment while the chapters are laid out.
3. Flip through the preview. Check the headings, any pictures and the first few pages.
4. Adjust the scan effect. For a whole book, keep blur and noise low so the small text stays easy to read.
5. Click "Generate Scanned PDF", then "Download Scanned PDF".

You can also save each page as a JPG or PNG image. Our guide to PDF, JPG and PNG explains when each one makes sense. With Pro, Bulk Scan handles several books at once.

Your book stays on your device

The book is opened and laid out inside your browser. It isn't uploaded to a server for conversion. Look Scanned also doesn't run scripts inside the book, and it doesn't let the book load anything from the internet while it is shown.

A few things to know first

• Books with copy protection (DRM) won't open. Most books bought from the Kindle store and many other shops are locked this way. Look Scanned doesn't remove the protection. Books without DRM work, such as free public-domain classics, many self-published books and e-books you created yourself.
• Fixed-layout books aren't supported yet. Some picture books, cookbooks and comics are made as EPUB files where every page is fixed in place. They will show an error instead of opening.
• The PDF is made of images. Like a real scan, the text can't be selected, searched or resized. Keep the original e-book for reading.
• Long books take longer. A novel can turn into a few hundred A4 pages, so give it a moment, especially on a phone.

Only scan books that you have the right to copy.

Have an e-book you've been meaning to print? Try it now.