If you just need to convert a file
Calibre is free, open source, runs on every desktop platform, and does this well. Open the EPUB, convert to PDF, choose an output page size. There are web converters too; be careful what you upload to one, since an unpublished manuscript is not a file to hand to an anonymous website.
Expect the result to look mediocre, and expect that to not be the converter’s fault.
Why the result looks wrong
Because the two formats disagree about what a page is. An EPUB contains no pages at all — it is HTML that reflows to the reader’s screen and font size. A PDF is fixed pages. Converting one to the other means inventing page breaks that the file was written to not have, and the machine inventing them has no idea that a heading should not sit alone at the bottom of a page.
The visible symptoms are always the same: headings stranded at the foot of a page, single lines carried over, images landing in the wrong place, and margins that look like a printout rather than a book.
What a print-ready PDF actually needs
If the reason you want a PDF is a paperback, a converted EPUB will be rejected. Print-on-demand services check for specific things:
- The right [trim size](/glossary/trim-size), exactly. Not A4, not US Letter — the finished dimensions of the book, usually 6 × 9 inches.
- Fonts embedded in the file. A PDF that references a font instead of containing it prints as something else, and this is the single most common rejection.
- Asymmetric margins. The inner margin has to be wider than the outer one, because the binding swallows part of the page. That extra is the gutter.
- No cover bound in. The cover is a separate file, sized to the spine width, which depends on the page count. An interior with the cover on page one is rejected.
- [Bleed](/glossary/bleed) on anything touching the edge — 0.125 inches — and nothing important within 0.25 inches of the trim.
You probably want two different PDFs
| Use | What it needs |
|---|---|
| Selling or giving away a digital copy | Cover on page one, screen-friendly margins, clickable contents. Read on a laptop. |
| Printing a paperback | True trim size, embedded fonts, gutter margin, no cover inside. Never opened by a reader. |
These are not the same file and one cannot substitute for the other. BookArc exports both, which is why there are two PDFs in the export menu rather than one.
And the other direction
If you are trying to turn a PDF *into* an ebook, that is harder and worth knowing in advance: you are recovering structure — headings, chapters, reading order — that the PDF threw away when it fixed the layout. Converting a print PDF to EPUB reliably produces an ebook with broken headings. Going back to the source document is almost always faster.