Novus Convert
Convert files
Ebook format

FB2 converter

FictionBook 2.0, written to disk as .fb2, is an XML ebook format that describes a book's structure — chapters, epigraphs, poems, citations — rather than its visual appearance. Because everything including images lives in one XML document, an .fb2 file is easy to parse, validate, and transform.

Private for supported formats — processed in your browser

Convert supported files

Runs on your device

Drop FB2 files here

Batch files can each use a different output. Nothing uploads for local conversions.

Working inputs include camera RAW, browser-local audio/video, PDF, CBZ/CBR comics, office documents, ebooks, markup, 3D models, structured text, images, and archives.

Where FB2 comes from

The format emerged from the Russian ebook community around 2004, designed by a group led by Dmitry Gribov as a semantic, library-friendly alternative to presentation-oriented formats. It remains dominant in Russia and much of Eastern Europe, where major stores and reading apps treat it as a first-class citizen.

How FB2 works

  • A single well-formed XML file; binary resources such as cover art are embedded as base64 inside binary elements.
  • Markup is purely semantic — section, title, epigraph, poem, cite — with no font or layout instructions.
  • A genre taxonomy is built into the specification for automatic library classification.
  • Files are frequently distributed zipped as .fb2.zip to offset XML's verbosity.

When to use FB2

  • Ebook distribution in Russia and Eastern Europe, where it is a native store format
  • Automated processing pipelines that exploit its strict XML schema
  • Long-term archival where validatable structure matters more than styling
  • Serving as a clean source format for conversion to EPUB or Kindle files

Strengths and limitations

Strengths

  • Trivially machine-readable and schema-validatable
  • Rich structured metadata baked into the format
  • Open specification with no licensing constraints
  • Compresses extremely well because it is plain text

Limitations

  • Base64-encoded images inflate the uncompressed size by roughly a third
  • No complex layout support, and tables are rudimentary
  • Adoption is thin outside its home markets

Compatibility

Readers popular in Russia and neighboring countries — PocketBook devices, FBReader, CoolReader — open .fb2 natively, and Calibre converts it cleanly. Western mainstream apps such as Apple Books and the Kindle ecosystem do not recognize it, so conversion to EPUB is the usual bridge.

A mandatory description block records title, authors, genres, language, translator, and publishing history in structured XML — richer than most rival ebook formats.

Convert FB2 to another format