FB2 to EPUB:
Converter

FB2 vs EPUB in one minute

• FB2 describes the structure of a book (sections, titles, poems, notes) and leaves the look to the reader app. It is widespread on Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian sites and in apps like FBReader.
• EPUB carries the same kind of structure plus styling, and it is the open standard for reflowable ebooks.
• Both reflow text to fit the screen, so nothing is lost by moving to EPUB in terms of reading comfort.
• Choose EPUB when the app you use doesn’t list FB2 among its supported formats.

What the converter rebuilds

Each top-level section of the FB2 becomes an EPUB chapter, named after the section’s title, and those names fill the table of contents. Nested subtitles become headings inside the chapter. Poems keep their stanza lines, epigraphs and citations become indented quotes, and tables stay tables.

Pictures stored inside the FB2 as base64 data are unpacked into separate image files. The image marked as the cover page becomes the EPUB cover, so the book shows a proper thumbnail in your library. Book title, author names and the language code are copied into the EPUB’s metadata.

FB2 keeps footnotes in a separate notes body. Those are gathered into a Notes chapter at the end. The small numbers in the text stay, but they aren’t clickable links, so you look the note up in that last chapter.

Old Cyrillic encodings

Many FB2 files from the 2000s were saved in Windows-1251 or KOI8-R rather than UTF-8. Opened with the wrong encoding they turn into rows of symbols. The converter reads the encoding named in the file’s first line and decodes the text with it, then writes the EPUB in UTF-8, which every modern reader handles. If the first line names no encoding, UTF-8 is assumed.

Checking the converted book

Open the EPUB and look at the table of contents first. If the FB2 had titled sections, you should see the same chapter names. A section with no title gets a plain name such as Chapter 3. Then flip to a poem or an epigraph to check the indents, and to the end of the book for the Notes chapter.

If the cover is missing, the FB2 probably didn’t mark one in its description, or the cover picture is a GIF.

Getting the EPUB onto your device

• iPhone or iPad: open the downloaded file and choose Books from the share sheet.
• Kobo e-reader: connect it to a computer with a USB cable and copy the EPUB onto the reader’s drive.
• Google Play Books: upload the EPUB from the Library on the web or in the app.
• Kindle: email it to your Send to Kindle address or use Amazon’s Send to Kindle app. Amazon turns the EPUB into a Kindle book for you.
• Android reading apps such as Moon+ Reader or ReadEra open EPUB from your Downloads folder.

Zipped books and batches

Libraries often serve books as .fb2.zip or .fbz to save space. Add the ZIP as it is; the first .fb2 inside it is converted. To convert a whole series, drop all the files at once and download every EPUB together in one ZIP.

If something goes wrong

• A message saying the file doesn’t look like FictionBook means the XML is damaged or the file is a different format with a .fb2 name. Try downloading the book again.
• A ZIP with no .fb2 inside can’t be converted; check whether it holds an EPUB or PDF already.
• GIF covers are kept as pictures in the book but aren’t used as the EPUB cover image.