Word to EPUB — Convert the Structure, Not Just the File

The bytes, yes. The structure, no — and that is the part that breaks. A Word document is a stream of styled paragraphs with page breaks in it. An EPUB is a set of documents with declared relationships and a navigation map. Nothing in the Word file says “this is chapter four”; it says “this text is 16pt bold and centred”. Converting means inferring the first from the second, and a converter that skips that step produces a valid file with no navigation at all.

Manual page breaks become blank screens or vanish. Bold centred lines stay bold centred lines rather than becoming chapters, so the Go To menu is empty. Tab-indented paragraphs come out ragged, because ebooks indent with styles rather than whitespace. A contents page you typed by hand keeps its page numbers, which mean nothing in a reflowable book. Headers, footers and text boxes are dropped entirely.

No. Using real Heading styles helps and we will use them if they are there, but most manuscripts do not have them — people write chapter titles by making a line bold and bigger, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. We detect those, and ask when something is genuinely ambiguous rather than guessing.

Yes. Italic, bold, block quotes and scene breaks all carry through. What changes is presentation you do not control in an ebook anyway — typeface, size, margins, line spacing — because the reader chooses those.

Not yet. That is a different pipeline — reading an EPUB rather than writing one — and it is on the list.

Converting is free. Free files include a short closing line crediting the tool, allow three adjustments, and are kept for 24 hours. Unlocking one file costs $5 once, with no subscription.