The Wrong Font Shows Up
An EPUB can embed a specific font directly in the file, or reference one it expects the reading system to provide. If a converter doesn't correctly carry over an embedded font, or substitutes an unavailable font with a generic fallback, the resulting PDF displays different typography than the original ebook, even though the actual text content is unaffected.
Table of Contents Links Don't Work
EPUB's navigation is built from an internal structure (often called the NCX or nav document) linking chapter titles to specific locations in the reflowable text. Converting to PDF requires translating those links into PDF's own bookmark and internal-link system — if a converter handles this step incompletely, the table of contents can appear but not actually jump anywhere when clicked.
Awkward Page Breaks Mid-Sentence or Mid-Image
Since EPUB has no fixed pages to begin with, a converter has to decide where pages break when creating the PDF — and it's making that decision without knowledge of the original author's intended visual pacing. A paragraph or image can end up split awkwardly across a page boundary as a result, which wasn't an issue in the original reflowable version at all.
Images Look Blurry or Oversized
An image embedded at a resolution intended for typical screen display can look soft or pixelated once placed into a PDF page at a larger physical size, since the underlying pixel count doesn't change based on the format it's placed into.
What's Genuinely Worth Fixing vs Accepting
Font substitution and minor page-break awkwardness are usually cosmetic and often acceptable, especially for a personal-use conversion. Broken navigation links or clearly wrong/missing images are worth addressing — either by trying a different conversion setting, or accepting that this particular EPUB's specific formatting simply doesn't translate cleanly and adjusting expectations accordingly.
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