How to turn a TXT novel into an EPUB e-book

Reading a long book as a TXT file is awkward: there’s no way to keep your place, and you can’t adjust fonts or margins. As an EPUB, the same text gets pagination, a remembered reading position and a clickable table of contents in every e-reader app.

Before you start: rename the file

The converter uses the file name as the book title. Rename novel_final(2).txt to something like The Moonlit Bookshop.txt and that’s the title your reading app will show.

Step 1: Add the file

Open the TXT to EPUB converter and drop your text file onto it — or several at once. The conversion runs in your browser, so the file is never uploaded.

Step 2: Check the options

Open Options to see three settings. The defaults suit most books.

Encoding of your text file

Leave it on Detect automatically. Older text files are often saved in legacy encodings such as Windows-1252, CP949 (Korean), Shift_JIS (Japanese) or Windows-1251 (Cyrillic). The converter recognises these and reads them correctly; the EPUB is always written as UTF-8, which displays correctly everywhere.

Paragraphs

• Each line is a paragraph (default) — for files where every paragraph sits on one line. Most web-novel downloads look like this.
• Blank lines separate paragraphs — for files where paragraphs are wrapped over several lines with an empty line between them, common in older e-texts such as Project Gutenberg plain-text files.

If sentences in the result are cut off mid-line, convert again with the second option.

Chapters

With Split at chapter headings (default), lines like these start a new chapter:

• Chapter 1, Chapter XII, Chapter Ten, Part 2, Book One
• Prologue, Epilogue
• Common Korean, Japanese and Chinese headings such as 제1장 or 第一章

A line only counts as a heading when it is short (60 characters or fewer) and starts with the heading word, so a sentence like “As we saw in Chapter 1…” in the middle of the text won’t split the book.

If your text has no headings, choose Do not split into chapters. Very long sections are still split into smaller files internally so e-readers stay fast.

Step 3: Convert and check

Click Convert, then Download to save the .epub. Open it in your reading app and check that:

• the table of contents lists the chapters in order,
• special characters display correctly,
• paragraphs break in natural places.

If chapters are split oddly, edit the heading lines in the TXT to a consistent form such as Chapter 1 — Title and convert again.

Step 4: Read it on your devices

• iPhone and iPad: tap the EPUB in the Files app and share it to Books.
• Android: upload the EPUB to Google Play Books to read it on your phone and tablet.
• Kindle: send it with Send to Kindle — see How to send an EPUB to your Kindle.
• Computer: open it in a free reader such as Calibre or Thorium Reader.

Common questions

Can I add a cover? A text file contains no images, so the book has no cover. You can add one afterwards with an e-book editor such as Calibre.

Can I make a Word document instead? Yes — use TXT to DOCX if you want to print or edit the text.

Can I go back to plain text? Yes — EPUB to TXT extracts the text again at any time.

Summary

Rename the file to the book’s title, convert with the default options and check the table of contents. Legacy encodings are detected automatically, so even old files come out readable.