Ebook Conversion - lit to epub

This may well be a multi-part post as I am exploring the wonderful world of e-books.  For the record, I have a Sony Reader Touch that I like very much.  One of my favorite things about it is it's ability to read just about any type of file out there.  However, sometimes, I have found books in the Microsoft Reader format or "lit" files that are not readable on the Sony.  After struggling with converting said files, I have finally found a conversion that accomplishes the goal of moving the lit file to an epub file, but it also does it cleanly and relatively professionally.  I am still learning, and there are a few tweaks I would like to see before I am completely satisfied.  Here is my current preferred process:

  1. Using 'convert lit' freeware, I was able to unwrap or "explode" the lit file into its various components, the primary one being the html file.  Since epub files are simply formatted and compressed xhtml, I then proceeded on.
  2. Opening the file with 'Sigil' another free tool that allows the full conversion of html to a proper epub.  This is currently the only "WYSIWYG" epub editor available, and has been a great tool.  It will automatically run code cleaning software so that your book stays valid.  It will also do an auto-scan so that you can make sure your book is at least generally in the proper format for an epub.
  3. Finally, when I was satisfied with the output from Sigil, I then imported the book into my 'Calibre' library.  While the book may look great there, and work properly, you may be surprised to find that it may not exactly be formatted for your reader.  The final step for me was to use Calibre to do a final conversion from epub to epub, formatted properly for my device.
This solved all my issues, and provided me with a very clean, readable, and enjoyable file to read on my Sony.  Again, there are a few more things that I would like to be able to add to the file, but my next step is to conquer the pdf to epub conversion.
More on that later!

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