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How do I convert epub to mobi using Calibre for this?

6 Answers 6

131

Yes, Calibre package contains a script called ebook-convert to convert ebooks between formats. You can install Calibre with

sudo apt-get install calibre

then

ebook-convert "book.epub" "book.mobi"

NB: Other formats are supported, too:

ebook-convert "book.azw3" "book.pdf"
3
  • FWIW, the quotes aren't strictly necessary.
    – kjprice
    Feb 3, 2016 at 3:29
  • 2
    To get an epub->pdf conversion to run, I had to make have xvfb installed and then run the ebook-convert command using: xvfb-run ebook-convert book.epub book.pdf Mar 2, 2016 at 23:33
  • I've figured out another way to use ebook-convert on a headless/server machine, without having to install Qt/X11 dependencies: askubuntu.com/a/1453851/182054
    – Mladen B.
    Feb 7, 2023 at 5:24
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I found a script for batch conversion:

for book in *.epub; do echo "Converting $book"; ebook-convert "$book" "$(basename "$book" .epub).mobi"; done

It works good for me, but the process is pretty slow.

4

Install calibre. Works with any arbitrary folder depth.

find . -name '*.epub' -type f -exec bash -c 'ebook-convert "$0" "${0%.epub}.mobi" --prefer-author-sort --output-profile=kindle --linearize-tables --smarten-punctuation --enable-heuristics' {} \;
2

You can also do this without installing Calibre. This would be really handy on a Chromebook, for example. There is a free, online site called EPUB Converter that will let you upload the epub and it lets you then download the mobi equivalent.

1

Yes, you can use Calibre for epub to mobi conversion. They declare mobi as supported output format in their FAQ.

I don’t think there’s anything Ubuntu-specific in the question, so it would probably belong somewhere else.

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  • 1
    I think this question is relevant because I wasn't aware that Calibre was available for Ubuntu. For some reason I thought it was like Scrivener and Windows/Mac only.
    – m0j0
    Feb 4, 2015 at 2:54
1

As of November 2021. I had to run the command using sudo.

E.g

sudo ebook-convert book.epub book.mobi

I didn't need the quotes, but you can use them if your file name has spaces. E.g:

sudo ebook-convert "book one.epub" "book one.mobi"

Everything else works as described in the accepted answer above.

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