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I developed some primitive tools to do that for ODT, and I wish I wouldn't had to, if such would have already been around (note: my workflow differs from writer2xhtml, another alternative for this task, in being based on semantic principles, while writer2xhtml works on the exact representation through direct formatting side of things). I'm glad that I don't have to do it for DOCX, since this would inflict even more problems for no good reason other than...well, you know already. I have to apologize, “print-ready PDF” is somewhat vague, let's not see it as referring to high-quality adjustments regarding colors etc., but a decent print layout out of the box. I additionally just remembered that there are people around selling document templates for print layouts, so one could take those too into account as a „solution“, where there aren't predefined print layouts already available to everyone.
Where manual work is inevitable to produce the required output formats, I wish such has to be done for the right reasons only. I know that people are fine for investing such efforts for the wrong reasons, I also know that this won't change any time soon, so I'm only thinking about how jeffcb could be saved from some of it, especially as he does this for an university initiative, especially as it's about Creative Commons licensed publications (hopefully CC BY-SA). Well, InDesign can do what he needs, Word can be made to do it, too, but choosing between those prisons ultimately won't determine what one can do with it, but what can't be done regardless of best effort.
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