Advice on converting epub file to text

[davidlv]

I have a old book obtained from a free source that is only available in the epub format. Tried opening it with textedit, no dice. Any suggestions as how to convert it to text?

 

[gwynevans]

Manually, just unzip it and you'll find that an epub is basically just a ZIP archive of XML files.

Programably, get a copy of "Calibre" and that will let you convert it into various formats, of which TXT is one of many.

 

[davidlv]

Manually, just unzip it and you'll find that an epub is basically just a ZIP archive of XML files.

Programably, get a copy of "Calibre" and that will let you convert it into various formats, of which TXT is one of many.

Thanks. I will try the unzip advice. I did download Calibre, the most difficult app I have ever tried to usei, bar none.
I just can't get it to work exporting the file to text. It will let me read the file, but not easily, it jumps from page to page, missing some text in between. argggg.
Do you know of any other alternative application similar in function to calibre?