Have you considered using ooo and an extention like Writer2Pub to convert your Word file to Epub? I curious about why a pro must do that when there are free programs that do it.

Apologies for not having replied to this question sooner. It's been a busy couple of months hereabouts.

I'm afraid I don't know very much about the conversion options you describe. I have not attempted to convert House of Shadows to Epub yet, for business reasons, but I will check it out when the time comes to consider it. Thank you for pointing this out.