Ebook Text Extractor

Overview

Extract plain text from EPUB, MOBI, and PDF files using Python scripts. No LLM calls - pure text extraction.

Supported Formats

| Format | Tool Used | Notes | |--------|-----------|-------| | EPUB | ebooklib + BeautifulSoup | Direct parsing, preserves structure | | MOBI | Calibre ebook-convert | Converts to EPUB first, then extracts | | PDF | PyMuPDF (fitz) | Fast, handles most PDFs well |

Usage

Unified extractor (auto-detects format):

python3 ~/.claude/skills/ebook-extractor/scripts/extract.py /path/to/book.epub
python3 ~/.claude/skills/ebook-extractor/scripts/extract.py /path/to/book.mobi
python3 ~/.claude/skills/ebook-extractor/scripts/extract.py /path/to/book.pdf

Output options:

# To stdout (default)
python3 scripts/extract.py book.epub

# To file
python3 scripts/extract.py book.epub -o output.txt
python3 scripts/extract.py book.epub > output.txt

Format-specific scripts:

python3 scripts/extract_epub.py book.epub
python3 scripts/extract_mobi.py book.mobi
python3 scripts/extract_pdf.py book.pdf

Setup

# One-command setup (installs all dependencies)
~/.claude/skills/ebook-extractor/setup.sh

# Or manually:
pip install -r ~/.claude/skills/ebook-extractor/requirements.txt
brew install calibre  # macOS, for MOBI support

Script Location

~/.claude/skills/ebook-extractor/scripts/

Common Issues

| Problem | Solution | |---------|----------| | Missing package | Run setup.sh or pip install -r requirements.txt | | MOBI fails | Ensure Calibre is installed: brew install calibre | | PDF garbled | Some PDFs are image-based; OCR needed (not supported) |