FB2 — FictionBook E-book
A FictionBook (FB2) e-book — a single self-contained XML file with full title and document metadata and three chapters. Popular in e-reader ecosystems; for testing FB2 parsers and FB2→EPUB conversion.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<FictionBook xmlns="http://www.gribuser.ru/xml/fictionbook/2.0" xmlns:l="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
<description>
<title-info>
<genre>sci_computers</genre>
<author><first-name>Novus</first-name><last-name>Examples</last-name></author>
<book-title>The Novus Example Reader</book-title>
<lang>en</lang>
</title-info>
<document-info>
<author><nickname>novus</nickname></author>
<date value="2026-01-01">2026</date>
<id>novus-fb2-0001</id>
<version>1.0</version>
</document-info>
</description>
<body>
<title><p>The Novus Example Reader</p></title>
<section><title><p>Chapter 1. On the Purpose of an Example</p></title><p>An example is a promise kept small. It shows, in the least space it can, exactly what a larger thing would do, so that anyone can check their understanding before committing to the real work.</p><p>A good example hides nothing. It states its shape, its size, and its intent, and it behaves the same way every time you open it. That reliability is the whole point: you are testing your tools against a known quantity, not a mystery.</p></section>
<section><title><p>Chapter 2. Formats and Their Shapes</p></title><p>Every file format is a small agreement about where things go. Some keep their text in plain view; others fold it into compressed containers or binary tables. None of that changes the words a reader finally sees.</p><p>This book is one such agreement. It is a package of chapters, a stylesheet, a cover, and a table of contents, zipped together and labelled so a reader knows what to do with each part. Take it apart and you will find nothing surprising inside — only the pieces named in its manifest.</p></section>
<section><title><p>Chapter 3. A Note to the Reader</p></title><p>You are free to use this file for any purpose: to test a reader, a converter, or a parser, or simply to confirm that a chapter renders the way you expected.</p><p>When you are done, you will know a little more about how e-books are built, and you will have a dependable fixture to return to. That is all an example ever hopes to be.</p></section>
</body>
</FictionBook>
Specifications
- Format
- FictionBook 2.0
- Encoding
- UTF-8
- Chapters
- 3
- Structure
- single self-contained XML
- Title
- The Novus Example Reader
What is a .fb2 file?
FB2 (FictionBook) is an XML-based e-book format that stores an entire book, including metadata and embedded images, in a single well-structured XML file. It emphasizes semantic markup of book structure over fixed presentation. It is especially popular in the Russian-speaking e-book community.
How to use this file
Use an example FB2 to test XML e-book parsing, embedded-image extraction, metadata handling, and converters between FB2 and EPUB.
How to use this file for testing
“FB2 — FictionBook E-book” is a deterministic Novus Examples fixture for Conversion testing. The same content exported across many formats and linked as a group, so you can convert one and diff against the expected twin.
Documented properties for this file: UTF-8 · FictionBook 2.0 · single self-contained XML. Compare results against paired or grouped companions on this page when present (clean↔damaged, searchable↔scanned, or format twins) so scores stay reproducible across runs.
Download the file once, keep the path stable in CI or local scripts, and treat the spec table as the contract: dimensions, seeds, field lists, and roles are intentional. Corrupt or invalid samples are labelled as such — expect parsers to fail loudly rather than silently accept them.
E-book fixtures are structured archives documented down to their spine and manifest. Test readers and converters, and where a valid↔intentionally-invalid pair exists, assert graceful handling of the malformed container.
Related files
- fb2FB2 - Cover Embedded as a base64 binary ElementA FictionBook whose cover is a base64-encoded PNG in a binary element at the foot of the file, wired to a coverpage in the description by xlink id. For testing FB2 image extraction and the converters that have to turn that blob back into a real file.
- fb2FB2 - Declared windows-1251 Encoding (Cyrillic)A Cyrillic FictionBook stored in windows-1251 and declaring that encoding in its XML declaration - the single-byte legacy encoding a large share of real FB2 files still use. For testing importers that assume every XML file is UTF-8 and produce mojibake instead of an error.
- fb2FB2 - Three-Level Nested Sections with a Notes BodyA FictionBook nested three sections deep, with prose directly inside an outer section, an epigraph, a cite block, and a footnote linking into a second body named notes. The FB2 equivalents of a multi-level table of contents and non-linear back matter, in one file.
- fb2FictionBook — Short SAMPLE (FB2)A minimal FictionBook (.fb2) SAMPLE with one section — for FB2/XML ebook importers.
- azw3AZW3 — Kindle KF8 E-bookThe valid EPUB converted to AZW3 (Kindle KF8) with Calibre — the modern Kindle format. For testing AZW3 readers and EPUB→AZW3 conversion.
- cbzCBZ — Comic Book ArchiveA CBZ comic archive — a ZIP of sequentially named JPEG pages, the standard container for digital comics. Built from generated pages; for testing comic readers and CBZ→PDF conversion.
Generated by generation/ebooks.py. Free for any use, no attribution required — license.