presumably the best
free tool for converting pdf's is Mobipocket Creator (in my opinion). It is meant to create mobipocket files, but it will give you a set of intermediate files (html files) which are just perfect to use as base material for editing.
It will not only convert your pdf text to html, but will also preserve text properties like italics or bold. I'm not really sure if it will preserve font types, however.
Next to that, it will preserve the images, if there are any, in their proper place in the text.