MOBI → Markdown

Overview

Convert an ebook to clean, readable Markdown suitable for an Obsidian vault. Use Calibre's ebook-convert, not pandoc — pandoc on an ebook with no semantic headings emits raw <span>/<svg> HTML soup; Calibre's Markdown writer produces clean output directly.

Prerequisites

• ebook-convert (Calibre). Check: ebook-convert --version. Install: sudo apt install calibre.

Steps

1. Convert

Calibre has no md output plugin — Markdown is produced by the TXT writer with --txt-output-formatting markdown. Output to .txt, then rename:

ebook-convert "input.mobi" "output.txt" \
  --txt-output-formatting markdown \
  --keep-links --keep-image-references
mv "output.txt" "output.md"

Italics, blockquotes, and numbered entries carry over intact. (--keep-links/--keep-image-references only take effect with a non-none formatting option.)

2. Add YAML frontmatter + H1

Prepend metadata so the note is searchable and shows a title:

---
title: <Title>
author: <Author>
translator: <if any>
publisher: <if any>
source: <input>.mobi (converted)
tags: [book, <topic>]
---

# <Title>
*<subtitle / edition line>*

3. Promote chapters to ## headings

Ebooks navigate by an internal TOC, so chapter titles often land as plain bold/paragraph text. Promote each (Introduction, every Book/Chapter, Notes, Index) to ## so Obsidian's outline panel works. Add subtitles where the edition has them.

4. Clean up

• Drop the duplicate title/TOC block at the top — heading-based navigation replaces the publisher's TOC page.
• Collapse runs of blank lines.
• Keep Notes and Index sections at the end.

Common Mistakes

Reference output

Running this on a full-length public-domain classic (e.g. a well-known philosophy or literature text with a modern translation) typically produces: YAML frontmatter, every Book/Chapter plus Introduction/Notes/Index promoted to ##, original front-matter TOC removed, and a few thousand lines of clean Markdown.