[bookman156]

It generally makes sense to write a book in a word processor, Word or the LibreOffice one. Although I also write on a manual typewriter and scan it in later. But if I want a web page from a Word document I wouldn't export as HTML I would copy and paste it into Notepad to strip it of crap and from there into a blank XHTML file that I'd already styled with CSS, usually because it is another page of an already existing website. (I guess you could also just save the Word doc as .txt but I prefer copy and paste.) You wouldn't have to worry about bad Word formatting and could tag from scratch in XHTML. You'd only have to refer to the original document to see if anything was italic.

Alternatively, you'd place the Word document in InDesign and style it there, particularly if a print book is your first concern rather than an ebook. I do write directly into Dreamweaver if I'm writing for the web as I can see what it will look like as I'm writing without having to view it in a browser. But I don't think I would want to write a whole book in Dreamweaver, notwithstanding that you can end up with a million word website solely created that way. (Although I suppose most websites these days use a CMS and don't 'hand-roll' any more.)

I don't think I would want to produce solely an ebook without a print book, but if I did I think Word > Text > Dreamweaver XHTML > Sigil would be the way I would do it. But as I would want a print book first and foremost (and may never actually do an ebook) it would be Word > InDesign. So any EPUB would inevitably be made from the InDesign file.