Convert AZW3 to PDF

EPUB in Amazon clothing

AZW3 — Kindle Format 8 — is much closer to EPUB than to the MOBI it replaced. Underneath it carries HTML5 and CSS, which is why it supports real stylesheets, embedded fonts, proper tables, drop caps, fixed layouts for illustrated books, and the typographic control the older format simply could not express. Converting one to PDF therefore produces a far better looking document than converting a MOBI, and the difference is in the source rather than in the conversion.

The book comes across as its own stylesheet asks for it: chapters in spine order, embedded fonts used, headings and pull quotes styled, images where the markup puts them. The table of contents becomes the PDF's bookmark sidebar, internal cross-references and footnote markers become working links, and text stays real text so the result is searchable.

The loss is the one every e-book conversion carries, and it is worth being clear about. An AZW3 has no pages — the reader makes them from your font size on your screen — and a PDF commits to one layout for ever. Pop-up footnotes become ordinary notes; the cover becomes the first page; anything interactive is dropped. Fixed-layout books — comics, children's books, textbooks — are already page-shaped and convert far more predictably than reflowable ones.

DRM is absolute. A book bought from the Kindle store is encrypted to an account, and no converter can open it — a claim worth being suspicious of wherever you see it made. KFX, the newer format Kindle apps now download, is not supported either. Books from Project Gutenberg, Standard Ebooks, direct purchases and your own files convert normally. If the main converter is unavailable, the page says so and uses a fallback, keeping chapters, text and pictures while simplifying the stylesheet and dropping links.

When you want something else

Calibre handles AZW3 better than anything else and is free. ebook-convert book.azw3 book.pdf --pdf-page-size a4 --pdf-default-font-size 12 gives you page size, margins, font and table-of-contents control in one command, and the interface previews the result before committing. For a library it is the only sensible option.

If the goal is to read the book rather than to print it, convert to EPUB instead — the structure maps across almost perfectly, since both are HTML and CSS underneath, and the result stays reflowable on any device. A PDF of a novel is a worse reading experience than the AZW3 you started with on every screen smaller than a sheet of paper.