How to Make an Ebook for Free (and From a PDF) in 2026

Making an ebook costs nothing in 2026. The tools are free, Amazon charges nothing to publish, and a PDF or EPUB is just a file. What costs time is picking the wrong route: writing in a design tool that cannot make an EPUB, or feeding a PDF to a converter and getting a page of broken lines back.

This guide is the neutral version. It lists the free tools, says exactly which file each one gives you, and checks each against what Amazon KDP accepts today (MOBI is gone, KPF is recommended, PDF works in only nine languages). It also covers the part most guides skip: what really happens when you turn a PDF into an ebook, and when you should not try. If you want the full process from idea to launch, our step-by-step ebook creation guide covers topic, outline and promotion. This page is about the file.

The short answer: four free routes

Where you start decides the route. There are only four starting points that matter.

1. You have an idea, or a few notes. Write the book somewhere that can export an ebook. Inkfluence AI lets you write (or draft chapters with help), edit and download a PDF ebook on the free plan. Google Docs, Apple Pages and LibreOffice Writer all export an EPUB from the File menu, also free.
2. You have a Word file. Upload the DOCX to Amazon KDP, which converts it for Kindle. Or open it in Kindle Create (free from Amazon) to make a KPF, the file KDP recommends. Or import it into Inkfluence AI to edit, add a cover and export a PDF.
3. You have a PDF. Find the file that made the PDF first. If there is none, a text-based PDF can go through Calibre (free) or be imported into Inkfluence AI and rebuilt as a new book. A scanned PDF needs OCR before anything else.
4. You want a designed PDF to sell on Gumroad or Etsy, or give away as a lead magnet. You do not need an EPUB at all. Inkfluence AI, Canva and any word processor will give you a PDF.

The table below shows what each of those free tools actually produces, so you can see which route ends in the file you need.

Which free tool exports what (October 2026 table)

Checked against each vendor's own page on 9 October 2026. Prices change; see Sources.

Three things the table makes clear. First, an EPUB is free in several places, but only from a word processor or a dedicated writing tool, never from a design tool. Second, you do not need an EPUB for Kindle: KDP takes a Word file directly. Third, the tool you write in matters less than whether you use real headings. Every EPUB exporter on the list builds the table of contents and the chapter breaks from your heading styles. Bold, large text that is not a heading is just a paragraph to them.

We put Inkfluence AI first because it is the only free option on the list that covers all four starting points: you can write from scratch, bring in a Word file, an EPUB or a text PDF, edit the chapters, design a cover and download a finished book from one dashboard. The free plan has real limits, which we spell out in Where free stops: the free export is a PDF with a small credit, and EPUB or DOCX needs a plan or a credit pack. If you want a different comparison, we also keep a longer list of ebook creators and one for Mac ebook apps.

Which free route fits your file?

Open the line that matches what you have right now. Each one tells you the route, the file you will end up with and the one thing to watch out for.

Which format you actually need

Four file types cover almost every case. Pick by where the book is going, not by what sounds most professional.

• EPUB is the reflowable ebook format. Text resizes and rewraps on any screen, which is what readers on phones and e-readers expect. Apple Books, Kobo and Google Play take EPUB, and KDP accepts it too if it meets the Kindle Publishing Guidelines.
• PDF is fixed pages: every reader sees the page exactly as you designed it. It is the right file for selling direct on Gumroad, Etsy or your own site, for lead magnets and workbooks, and for printing. It is the wrong file for a novel on a 6-inch e-reader.
• DOCX is a perfectly good upload for KDP. Amazon says most Word files convert well, with the caveat that complex formatting may not.
• KPF is what Kindle Create produces. KDP calls it a go-to method for avoiding formatting issues, because Amazon's own tool built it. It only works on KDP.

What about MOBI? Stop following guides that say "MOBI for Kindle". Amazon's own format page says: "Effective March 2025, we will no longer accept MOBI files for fixed-layout eBooks." For a normal reflowable book, upload DOCX, EPUB or KPF instead. Our ebook formats explainer goes deeper on the differences.

Most people need a PDF more often than they think. Across 20,010 exports on Inkfluence AI, PDF was chosen nearly 9 times in 10, far ahead of DOCX and EPUB; the reasons are in our PDF export data study.

How to make an ebook for free, step by step

The steps below use Google Docs because it is free, runs on any computer and exports an EPUB in one click. The same rules apply in Pages and LibreOffice. Short notes for Word, Pages, Canva and Inkfluence AI follow.

1. Write with real headings

Set every chapter title to Heading 1 and every section inside a chapter to Heading 2, using the style menu, not bold text. The EPUB export uses those styles to split the book into chapters and to build the table of contents a reader taps on their device. This one habit fixes most "my ebook is one giant chapter" problems before they start.

2. Add the front matter

Before chapter one, add a title page (title, subtitle, your name), a short copyright line (the year and your name are enough for most self-published books), and an optional dedication. Leave the contents page out if you are making an EPUB: readers' devices build their own from your headings, and a typed contents list with page numbers means nothing on a screen with no fixed pages.

3. Put images in line with the text

Insert pictures "in line" so they sit between paragraphs. Floating images, text wrapped around pictures and text boxes are positioned for a fixed page; in a reflowable ebook they drift or vanish. Keep images to the width of the page and use JPEG or PNG.

4. Export the EPUB

In Google Docs, choose File, Download, EPUB Publication (.epub). Google has offered this export since 2016, and its current help pages list EPUB among the formats you can export. The file lands in your downloads folder, ready to open.

5. Check it on a real reader

Open the EPUB in Apple Books, in Calibre's free viewer, or in Kindle Previewer, which Amazon describes as "a free desktop standalone application" for checking how a book will look on Kindle. Look for three things: does each chapter start on a new screen, does the table of contents work, and do the images sit where you expect. Change the font size while you check; that is the test a reflowable book has to pass.

6. Make a cover

The cover is a separate image file, not a page in the document. For KDP, Amazon recommends 2,560 pixels high by 1,600 pixels wide, JPEG preferred, 5MB or smaller. More on free cover options below.

In Microsoft Word

Word saves DOCX and PDF; it has no built-in EPUB export. For Kindle you do not need one: save the DOCX and upload it to KDP, or open it in Kindle Create, which "works with .doc and .docx files exported from any source, including Microsoft Word, Apple Pages, Google Docs". For other stores on Windows, the free WordToEPUB tool from the DAISY Consortium turns a Word file into an EPUB 3. The heading rule from step 1 still applies.

In Apple Pages

Pages exports EPUB on Mac, iPhone and iPad. Pick a portrait (word-processing) book template so you can choose a reflowable EPUB, which is the right choice for novels and guides. Landscape (page-layout) templates export fixed layout only, which suits picture books and cookbooks but reads badly on a phone.

In Canva

Canva is a design tool, so it is very good at a designed PDF and the wrong tool for a reflowable ebook. Download PDF Standard for a book people read on screens, or PDF Print (300 dpi, with bleed and crop marks) for printing. If you also need an EPUB, write the text in a word processor and use Canva only for the cover.

In Inkfluence AI

Start a new book from an idea, or use Import content to bring in a Word file, EPUB, PDF or plain text. The editor shows the book as chapters, so the heading problem from step 1 is solved for you. Edit, pick a cover, then export. On the free plan you get a PDF with a small footer credit and a closing credit page; a plan or any credit pack unlocks EPUB, DOCX and the KDP package. If you want help drafting chapters, the free plan includes 5 chapters to start and 5 more each month; the AI side of that is covered in our free AI ebook writer guide.

How to make an ebook from a PDF

This is the question most guides answer with a converter link and nothing else. The honest answer has three parts: try not to convert at all, test whether your PDF can be converted, then pick a route knowing what will break.

First, find the source file

The best PDF conversion is no conversion. A PDF is a picture of pages: every line of text is pinned to a position on a fixed sheet. The Word, Google Docs or Pages file that produced it still knows which lines are headings, where paragraphs end and which picture belongs to which caption. Convert that file and almost everything carries over.

Calibre, the free converter most guides send you to, says it plainly in its own manual: "PDF documents are one of the worst formats to convert from. They are a fixed page size and text placement format." Its FAQ ranks 16 input formats from best to worst, and PDF comes last. So check your email attachments, your cloud drive and whoever designed the PDF before you start converting.

That mix backs both halves of the advice. PDFs are a very common starting point, so it is worth knowing how to handle one. But Word files are more common still, and if a Word file exists behind your PDF, it is the better thing to start from.

Will my PDF convert? A 30-second test

Open the PDF and tick each line that is true.

Route A: Calibre (free, Windows, Mac and Linux)

1. Install Calibre from calibre-ebook.com and add the PDF to your library.
2. Select it, choose Convert books, and set the output format to EPUB (or AZW3 for your own Kindle).
3. Under PDF input, adjust the line un-wrapping factor if sentences come out broken across lines.
4. Use Search and replace to remove running headers, footers and page numbers, which Calibre otherwise leaves in the middle of your text.
5. Convert, open the result in the viewer and fix the chapter breaks.

Calibre's manual is unusually honest about the limits. It says "PDF is a really, really bad format to use as input" and lists what it cannot do: multi-column and image-based documents are not supported, vector images and tables are not extracted, links and tables of contents are not supported, fonts embedded without Unicode can come out garbled, and right-to-left text and maths fail. If your PDF is a novel in one column, Calibre does a fair job. If it is a workbook full of tables, it will not.

Route B: Kindle Create's PDF path makes a Print Replica

Kindle Create accepts PDFs, but read what it makes. Amazon's help page says "Kindle Create converts your PDF files into Print Replica eBooks", which keep the formatting and layout of the print edition but "don't allow the reader to resize text" and are only available on certain devices: Fire tablets and the free Kindle reading apps. Print Replica is not supported in Japanese. That suits a textbook, a cookbook or a heavily designed guide. It does not give you a normal Kindle book that flows on an e-ink Kindle.

Route C: upload the PDF straight to KDP

KDP lists PDF among its "additional accepted formats", with a hard limit: "We only support PDF files in the following languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Galician, and Basque." Amazon still converts the PDF to a Kindle book, so the same column, table and header problems apply. Always preview the result before you publish.

Route D: import it into Inkfluence AI and rebuild it

Import is free on every plan, with no chapter cap on imported books. Drop a text-based PDF into Import content: Inkfluence AI reads the text, strips running headers and page numbers, finds the chapters and opens the book in the editor. From there you can fix anything the PDF mangled, rewrite sections, add a cover and export. A PDF export is free; EPUB, DOCX and the KDP package need a plan or a credit pack.

The limits, plainly. Scanned or image-only PDFs are refused with the message "No text found in PDF", so OCR them first. Images and the original cover do not come across from a PDF (they do from DOCX and EPUB imports), so the book gets a fresh cover you can change. And check the chapter breaks before you export, because a PDF has no real headings to go on. If your goal is turning a PDF into a new, longer or reworked book rather than a straight conversion, the PDF to ebook maker page shows that workflow.

What gets lost in any PDF conversion

Whichever route you choose, these are the parts of a PDF that do not survive cleanly. Knowing them in advance turns a frustrating afternoon into a checklist.

Free cover options

An ebook cover is an image file uploaded next to the book, not a page inside it. Amazon's ebook cover page recommends 2,560 pixels high by 1,600 pixels wide, says JPEG is the preferred format, asks for 300 DPI and RGB colour, and sets the file size at 5MB or fewer. Make the cover at that size and it works on Apple Books and Kobo too.

• Canva's free plan has ebook cover templates at roughly the right shape. Resize to 1,600 by 2,560 and download JPG.
• Inkfluence AI gives every book a themed cover and includes a basic cover designer on the free plan, so you can set the title, author and colours. AI cover art is not on the free plan: it comes with paid plans and credit packs.
• Your own photo works better than you might expect for non-fiction, as long as the title is large enough to read at thumbnail size.

Whatever you use, shrink the cover to the size of a fingernail on your screen and check you can still read the title. That is how most buyers first see it. For more choice, see our roundup of ebook cover generators and the book cover generator page.

Publish or sell it for free

None of the main places to publish an ebook charge you to list it. They take a share when it sells.

• Amazon KDP. KDP describes itself as "free and simple tools to self-publish". Upload a DOCX, EPUB or KPF (or a PDF, in the nine supported languages) plus your cover JPEG. Our guide to selling ebooks on Amazon and the KDP step-by-step walk through the upload screens, and KDP royalties explained covers what you earn.
• Apple Books, Kobo and Google Play. Each takes an EPUB. Apple's Pages site links straight to publishing a book from Pages to the Apple Books store.
• Gumroad and Etsy. Both are built for selling a PDF download directly to readers. See selling ebooks on Gumroad and selling ebooks on Etsy for setup and fees.
• Your own site or email list. A PDF lead magnet is the most common free ebook of all; the lead magnet generator is built for exactly that.

Before you hit publish, run this five-point check:

1. Every chapter starts on a new screen and appears in the table of contents.
2. You changed the font size in the preview and nothing broke.
3. Images sit next to the text they belong to.
4. The cover is 1,600 by 2,560 pixels, under 5MB, and readable as a thumbnail.
5. The title, author name and description match on the file and on the store page.

If the book was written with AI help and is going to Amazon, read KDP's AI disclosure rules before you upload.

Where free stops

Free gets you a real, sellable ebook. It does not get you everything, and it helps to know where each free option runs out.

• Time. The free word-processor route is free in money, not in hours. Expect to spend the most time on headings, images and checking the file on a device.
• Design. Google Docs and LibreOffice produce clean but plain EPUBs. Readers rarely mind in a novel; in a cookbook or workbook a plain layout shows. Our book formatting software comparison covers the paid step up.
• EPUB checks. Free exporters do not always produce an EPUB that every store accepts first time. If a store rejects your file, the error message usually names the problem; Calibre can often fix it with a round-trip conversion.
• Canva. PDF only for the book itself. Great for short visual guides, slow for anything long.
• Inkfluence AI's free plan. Import is free with no chapter cap, but AI help writing new chapters is 5 chapters to start and 5 more each month. Free exports are PDF only, with a small footer credit and a closing credit page. EPUB, DOCX, the KDP package, AI cover art and direct publishing to Etsy and Gumroad are not on the free plan.

When paying is worth it. If you only need one EPUB or DOCX, a one-time credit pack (15 credits for $9.99) unlocks EPUB, DOCX and the KDP export for your account and removes the footer credit, with no subscription. If you are making books every month, Creator at $9.99 a month adds 35 chapters a month and every export format. Full details are on the pricing page. If you are happy with a PDF, or with Google Docs for your EPUB, you do not need to pay anything. For a deeper look at which tools fit the whole job, see the ebook creation hub, or compare us head to head with Reedsy and Canva.

Frequently asked questions

Can I make an ebook for free?

Yes. Inkfluence AI's free plan lets you write or import a book and download it as a PDF ebook. For a free EPUB, export one from Google Docs, Apple Pages or LibreOffice Writer. For Kindle, upload a Word file to Amazon KDP, which accepts DOCX and charges nothing to publish.

How do I make an ebook in Google Docs?

Style each chapter title as Heading 1, insert images in line with the text, then choose File, Download, EPUB Publication (.epub). Open the file in Apple Books, Calibre or Kindle Previewer to check the chapters and contents before you publish.

Can I make an ebook in Canva and sell it on Amazon?

Canva exports PDFs (PDF Standard or PDF Print) and images. KDP accepts PDF only in nine languages, and a designed PDF converts to Kindle less cleanly than a Word file or EPUB. Canva is better for a PDF you sell on Gumroad or Etsy, or for the cover, with the text written in a word processor.

Can I make an ebook in Microsoft Word?

Yes. Save the book as a DOCX with Heading 1 chapter titles and upload it to KDP, or open it in Kindle Create to make a KPF. Word has no built-in EPUB export; on Windows the free WordToEPUB tool from the DAISY Consortium adds one.

How do I turn a PDF into an ebook for free?

Find the Word or Docs file that made the PDF and convert that instead. If there is none, make sure you can select the text, then convert it with Calibre or import it into Inkfluence AI and fix the chapters. Expect tables, columns and footnotes to need manual work.

How do I make an EPUB from a PDF?

In Calibre, add the PDF, choose Convert books, set the output to EPUB, adjust the line un-wrapping factor and remove headers and footers with Search and replace. Calibre's own manual warns that PDF is a poor input format and does not support multi-column or image-based PDFs. A scanned PDF needs OCR first.

Can I upload a PDF to Amazon KDP?

Yes, but only for books in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Galician or Basque. Running a PDF through Kindle Create instead produces a Print Replica ebook, which keeps the page layout but does not let readers resize text and only works on Fire tablets and Kindle apps.

What is the best format for an ebook?

EPUB for Apple Books, Kobo and Google Play; DOCX, EPUB or KPF for Kindle; PDF for selling direct, lead magnets, workbooks and print. KDP no longer accepts MOBI for fixed-layout ebooks (since March 2025).

Can I make an ebook on my phone or iPhone?

Yes. Apple Pages on iPhone and iPad exports EPUB, and the Google Docs app on Android exports EPUB too. Typing a whole book on a phone is slow, so many people draft on a phone and finish the formatting on a computer.

Can AI make an ebook for free?

Yes, within limits. Inkfluence AI's free plan drafts 5 chapters to start and 5 more each month and exports a PDF. Our free AI ebook writer guide and the AI ebook generator page cover that route in detail.

Sources

All checked 9 October 2026.

• Amazon KDP, eBook manuscript formats (accepted formats, PDF languages, MOBI change, KPF and DOCX notes): kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200634390
• Amazon KDP, eBook cover requirements (2,560 x 1,600 px, JPEG, 5MB or fewer): kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G6GTK3T3NUHKLEFX
• Amazon KDP, Prepare Print Replica books with Kindle Create: kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/GMUKXSTBCN6F2TGM
• Amazon KDP, Kindle Create and Word files: kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G79CTKR8BX79E96L
• Amazon KDP, Kindle Previewer: kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G202131170
• Amazon KDP home ("free and simple tools to self-publish"): kdp.amazon.com
• Calibre manual, Ebook conversion (PDF input limits): manual.calibre-ebook.com/conversion.html
• Calibre FAQ (input formats ranked, PDF last): manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html
• Calibre, About ("completely free and open source") and Download (Windows, macOS, Linux): calibre-ebook.com/about, calibre-ebook.com/download
• Google Workspace Updates, Export Google Docs files as EPUB publications: workspaceupdates.googleblog.com
• Google Docs Editors Help, export formats including EPUB: support.google.com/docs/answer/7068618
• Apple Support, Create a book in Pages and export EPUB: support.apple.com/108362
• Apple, Pages (Mac, iPad, iPhone; Creator Studio subscription; publishing to Apple Books): apple.com/pages
• LibreOffice Help, EPUB export: help.libreoffice.org
• Reedsy Studio (free core, EPUB and PDF export, paid tiers): reedsy.com/studio
• DAISY Consortium, Getting started with WordToEPUB: daisy.org
• Canva Help Center, download file types (PDF Standard and PDF Print): canva.com/help/download-file-types
• Inkfluence AI import mix: first-party count of projects created by import, 23 June to 9 October 2026 (method in the data box above). Export mix: PDF export data study.

Related guides

• How to Create an Ebook: the full process
• Free Ebook Creator
• Free PDF creator
• Book formatter
• Help: export an EPUB for Kindle
• Help: export for Amazon KDP