eBook in Zip (HTML) File

[cgrapski]

This is probably a simple issue - and I am too ignorant to know the solution.

But it is something I have struggled with for years.

I have a number of ebooks in ZIP files - inside the ZIP is a "start_here.html" main html page and a folder. The folder contains the individual pages - numerically. As well as a cover.html with an associated jpg file and addition gif files for images associated with individual pages. Additionally it has a css stylesheet.

I had hoped that the internal converter would convert the zip file to an epub - but it doesn't seem to get it right. I often get the epub - with a handful of the LAST pages (index) going from last forward (so page 200 to page 199 etc). And then it stops - short of the full book (even backwards).

Am I assuming wrong that this COULD be used for this conversion? Is there another internal method in Calibre? Or if not - what would people recommend I do to take the html file(s) and create an epub the simplest way. (Even mobicreator confuses me on this - how do I enter the files - in that format - to produce the intended ebook?)

I hope this is not too stupid a question to ask.

NOTE: Explaining my difficulties using Mobipocket Creator: I put in the files from the subfolder. But the first few come from the end - and I can't highlight them individually to move them. I also can't use the cover photo - it doesn't accept it - and I can't get the images (associated with particular pages) in either. It produces a PRC file that has ALL the pages - just with that ordering issue. And without the images. So it is not ideal. I wonder if using the new calibre create ebooks functions would be better. But I am not really familiar with using this fairly new element. And how I would use it for this kind of formatted book (an html format - I would love to get rid of the HTML Page (forward/backward) headers and produce a "clean" epub. [I seem to have "solved" the page order issue - by carefully having the mouse point to the first page when dragging and dropping. And also by only adding at the top after that (so for pages that are in roman numerals I do that). But I still can't get it to add the cover - but that is secondary in importance. What I need to be able to do is to have it recognize the image files where the html is meant to load them in the book. That I can't figure out.]