lit2pdf: Convert Microsoft Reader .lit ebooks to PDF

The .lit files are Microsoft Reader proprietary ebook files, but you can convert them to HTML with clit (ConvertLit). To install clit from source, follow this tutorial (or just download this and this .deb compiled versions and double-click them to install).

After installing it, you can use this script that convert the .lit to .html and open it with firefox browser. At the browser, you can "print" them as PDF or just save the HTML, if you want.

I've made this script to install everything and also create an lit2pdf script to make things easier:

#install clit
cd /tmp
wget -c http://ace-host.stuart.id.au/russell/files/debian/sarge/libtommath/libtommath_0.37-1_i386.deb
wget -c http://ace-host.stuart.id.au/russell/files/debian/sarge/clit/clit_1.8-1_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i libtommath_0.37-1_i386.deb clit_1.8-1_i386.deb
wget -O cleanlit.sh -c http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=30912&d=1177590357
#install litreader script
chmod +x /tmp/cleanlit.sh
sudo mv /tmp/cleanlit.sh /usr/local/bin/litreader
#install lit2pdf script
sudo apt-get install htmldoc
echo '
echo "[Stage 1] converting $1 to HTML..."
HTML_DIR=`litreader "$1" | grep Exploded | sed -e "s/Exploded .* into //g" -e "s/\.$//g" -e "s/\"//g"`
echo "HTMLs saved to $HTML_DIR"
BOOK_TITLE=`basename "$1" .lit`
sed -i -e "s/<title>New Page 1<\/title>/<title>$BOOK_TITLE<\/title>/g" ${HTML_DIR}*.htm
echo "[Stage 2] converting the HTML to PDF..."
#htmldoc -t html -f "$1.html" --book --no-toc --no-title ${HTML_DIR}*.htm
htmldoc -t pdf13 -f "$1.pdf" --webpage --no-toc --no-title ${HTML_DIR}*.htm
echo "PDF saved to $1.pdf"
evince "$1.pdf"
'> /usr/local/bin/lit2pdf
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/lit2pdf

Then you can associate your .lit files with litreader and create an nautilus-actions entry to convert an .lit file to .pdf.

:-)

P.S.: thanks to kleeman, elgreengeeto, aircooledbusnut and all the others from this ubuntuforums thread.