MOBI/AZW3 → TXT
Converting a novel from Kindle / Mobipocket (.mobi, .azw3, .azw) to Plain text (.txt) is a routine step in practice — a TXT file is plain text, opens in far more software, and is smaller. Going from Kindle / Mobipocket to Plain text does raise extra questions worth thinking about: you lose every illustration, cover and diagram; metadata such as title, author and language. Below we explain in detail how Kindle / Mobipocket becomes Plain text and what to watch out for, and the page ends with a converter that does the job right in your browser — nothing is uploaded, the file never leaves your machine.
What is MOBI/AZW3?
The Kindle family (.mobi, .azw3, .azw) is Amazon's proprietary e-book format. It reflows and can carry a table of contents, and it is read mainly on Kindle devices and the Kindle app, or delivered through Send to Kindle. AZW3 supports a reasonable amount of CSS while the older .mobi barely supports any. It is one of the most common proprietary formats in existing libraries — plenty of books bought or downloaded years ago are in it — which is why converting it to something more portable is such a practical need. Read the MOBI/AZW3 format guide
| Extensions | .mobi.azw3.azw |
|---|---|
| Typical use | Reading on Kindle devices and the Kindle app; one of the most common proprietary formats in existing libraries. |
What is TXT?
TXT is plain text: nothing but characters and line breaks, with no presentation information at all. That makes it the smallest and most compatible option — from the most basic feature phone to any operating system, there is almost no software that cannot open it. Most Chinese web novels circulate as TXT, and it is the easiest format to copy, search, batch-process and convert further. The cost is that it stores no images, colours, tables or table of contents, and there is nowhere to keep the title and author, so it behaves more like a clean body of text than a complete book. Read the TXT format guide
| Extensions | .txt |
|---|---|
| Typical use | Chinese web novels, logs, and any text-only content that needs maximum compatibility. |
How to convert MOBI/AZW3 to TXT
.mobi/.azw3 are proprietary Amazon binary containers with no official parsing spec; third-party tools rely on reverse engineering and occasionally fail or drop metadata. AZW3 stores HTML internally, so extracting text is easier than preserving layout.
Because TXT stores characters only, every font, size, colour, table, footnote and hyperlink is gone, and headings degrade to ordinary lines. You must also choose an encoding (UTF-8 for Chinese, GBK if targeting older devices).
Illustrations, covers and diagrams inside MOBI/AZW3 files are images, and the TXT format stores none, so they are all lost. A comic MOBI/AZW3, for example, keeps everything in pictures — converting it to TXT throws away most of the content.
Metadata in the MOBI/AZW3 source — title, author, publisher, language, table of contents, cover — has nowhere to live in the target, so converting to TXT loses all of it.
If you still want chapter navigation inside the TXT file, a novel reader such as Tide Reader can split it automatically by recognising explicit chapter-heading lines in the text.
Convert MOBI/AZW3 to TXT
KINDLE → TXT
The Kindle formats (.mobi, .azw3, .azw) are Amazon's proprietary binary containers with no public specification, so they cannot be reliably parsed or produced in a browser. This direction needs a desktop e-book tool; the EPUB or TXT you convert can be read in the Kindle app directly.
A novel reader that syncs your progress across every platform
Tide Reader opens TXT and EPUB, detects chapters on import, lays the text out the way you like it, and syncs your reading position across Windows, macOS, iOS and Android. Drop the converted file in and start reading.
Download Tide ReaderTXT and EPUB; local-first reading, with optional cloud sync and WebDAV.