diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 865d5a5..f0f2e83 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
 # MarkItDown
 
+[![PyPI](https://img.shields.io/pypi/v/markitdown.svg)](https://pypi.org/project/markitdown/)
+
 The MarkItDown library is a utility tool for converting various files to Markdown (e.g., for indexing, text analysis, etc.)
 
 It presently supports:
@@ -28,7 +30,6 @@ or from the source
 pip install -e .
 ```
 
-
 # Usage
 The API is simple:
 
@@ -40,6 +41,25 @@ result = markitdown.convert("test.xlsx")
 print(result.text_content)
 ```
 
+To use this as a command-line utility, install it and then run it like this:
+
+```bash
+markitdown path-to-file.pdf
+```
+
+This will output Markdown to standard output. You can save it like this:
+
+```bash
+markitdown path-to-file.pdf > document.md
+```
+
+You can pipe content to standard input by omitting the argument:
+
+```bash
+cat path-to-file.pdf | markitdown
+```
+
+
 You can also configure markitdown to use Large Language Models to describe images. To do so you must provide mlm_client and mlm_model parameters to MarkItDown object, according to your specific client.
 
 ```python
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 74df032..756380a 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -38,6 +38,7 @@ dependencies = [
   "youtube-transcript-api",
   "SpeechRecognition",
   "pathvalidate",
+  "charset-normalizer",
 ]
 
 [project.urls]
diff --git a/src/markitdown/_markitdown.py b/src/markitdown/_markitdown.py
index 40c2307..1ba39eb 100644
--- a/src/markitdown/_markitdown.py
+++ b/src/markitdown/_markitdown.py
@@ -27,6 +27,7 @@ import pptx
 import puremagic
 import requests
 from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
+from charset_normalizer import from_path
 
 # Optional Transcription support
 try:
@@ -162,9 +163,7 @@ class PlainTextConverter(DocumentConverter):
         elif "text/" not in content_type.lower():
             return None
 
-        text_content = ""
-        with open(local_path, "rt", encoding="utf-8") as fh:
-            text_content = fh.read()
+        text_content = str(from_path(local_path).best())
         return DocumentConverterResult(
             title=None,
             text_content=text_content,
diff --git a/tests/test_files/test_mskanji.csv b/tests/test_files/test_mskanji.csv
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d67f5a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/test_files/test_mskanji.csv
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+名前,年齢,住所
+佐藤太郎,30,東京
+三木英子,25,大阪
+�煖ｴ淳,35,名古屋
diff --git a/tests/test_markitdown.py b/tests/test_markitdown.py
index 15dd3de..9aaa37e 100644
--- a/tests/test_markitdown.py
+++ b/tests/test_markitdown.py
@@ -87,6 +87,13 @@ SERP_TEST_EXCLUDES = [
     "data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20width%3D",
 ]
 
+CSV_CP932_TEST_STRINGS = [
+    "蜷榊燕,蟷ｴ鮨｢,菴乗園",
+    "菴占陸螟ｪ驛�,30,譚ｱ莠ｬ",
+    "荳画惠闍ｱ蟄�,25,螟ｧ髦ｪ",
+    "鬮呎ｩ区ｷｳ,35,蜷榊商螻�",
+]
+
 
 @pytest.mark.skipif(
     skip_remote,
@@ -170,6 +177,12 @@ def test_markitdown_local() -> None:
     for test_string in SERP_TEST_STRINGS:
         assert test_string in text_content
 
+    ## Test non-UTF-8 encoding
+    result = markitdown.convert(os.path.join(TEST_FILES_DIR, "test_mskanji.csv"))
+    text_content = result.text_content.replace("\\", "")
+    for test_string in CSV_CP932_TEST_STRINGS:
+        assert test_string in text_content
+
 
 @pytest.mark.skipif(
     skip_exiftool,