Fwiw, I've converted 20+ pdf titles to epub. I haven't found any foolproof, quick way of doing this. My rather laborious procedure now is:
1. If necessary, remove the pdf restrictions which prevent exporting as text;
2. Use the File | Save As Text menu option to create a .txt version;
3. Using the text editor of your choice, remove page headers, page numbers, extraneous front matter. Then find and change quotes, apostrophes and accents etc., to html named entities (e.g., " --> &ldquo
;
4. Create an epub file using Sigil (thank you so, so much Valloric)
5. Load into Calibre (thank you Kovid);
6. Transfer to Sony reader;
7. Read, enjoy, bookmark the typos;
8. Back to Sigil, correct all the typos etc., repeat steps 4 to 7.
This works, it's labour intensive, and during the process you may lose the will to live.