Sample EPUB Files — Download E-book Test Files (3 and 12 Chapters)
Electronic Publication (e-book) · .epub · MIME type application/epub+zip
Download a sample EPUB file — a valid EPUB 3 e-book with a title, author, language metadata, a navigation document, an NCX table of contents for older readers, and 3 or 12 XHTML chapters. Apple Books, Kobo, Calibre, Thorium and browser-based readers all open it.
EPUB is a ZIP of XHTML and metadata, which makes it easy to inspect and easy to get subtly wrong. These files are generated with ebooklib and validate cleanly, so they are a reliable control when testing an e-book uploader, a reader app, or an EPUB → PDF/MOBI converter.
Download sample EPUB files
| File | Details | Size | Download |
|---|---|---|---|
sample-ebook-3-chapters.epub | — | 6 KB | |
sample-ebook-12-chapters.epub | — | 18 KB |
Need one of every documents format? Download the documents sample pack (110 KB, one small file of every documents format (14 files)).
Use these files from the command line or CI
Every URL is stable and CORS-open. Pin the SHA-256 in your test and you will know the moment a fixture changes.
# Download one file curl -O https://pnb-website-bucket.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/samples/documents/epub/sample-ebook-3-chapters.epub # Verify it (SHA-256 is listed for every file above) shasum -a 256 sample-ebook-3-chapters.epub # Machine-readable index of every sample file curl https://pnb-website-bucket.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/samples/index.json | jq '.files[] | select(.format=="epub")'
EPUB format at a glance
| Full name | Electronic Publication (e-book) |
|---|---|
| Extensions | .epub |
| MIME type | application/epub+zip |
| Standard | EPUB 3 (W3C / IDPF) |
| Container | ZIP with mimetype, META-INF/container.xml, OPF package |
| Contents | XHTML chapters, nav.xhtml, toc.ncx |
| Magic bytes | 50 4B 03 04 + 'mimetype' = application/epub+zip |
What people test with sample EPUB files
- E-book reader and library apps
- EPUB → PDF or Kindle conversion
- Digital-publishing upload flows
Frequently asked questions
Does Kindle read EPUB?
Since 2022, Amazon's Send to Kindle converts EPUB on upload, so yes in practice — though the device itself still uses Amazon's own format internally. Every other major reader opens EPUB natively.
Are these EPUB files safe to download?
Yes. Every file is generated by our own open script from scratch — nothing is scraped or user-uploaded — and contains no scripts, macros or executables. The SHA-256 of each file is published on this page so you can verify what you received.
Can I use the sample EPUB files commercially?
Yes. They are free for any purpose, including commercial products, test suites, demos and redistribution, with no attribution required. There is nothing to license and no one to ask.
Can I hotlink these files or use them in CI?
Yes. Every link is a stable direct URL over HTTPS with Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * and long cache headers, so curl, wget, fetch() and test runners can pull them directly. A JSON index of every file is linked from each page (see the command-line section).
Related sample files
Testing a file pipeline? We build them.
Uploads, conversions, previews, document processing and media workflows are the kind of production systems Pine & Birch designs and runs for clients — which is why we needed these files in the first place.
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