Converting epubs to Plain-Text?

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Thank you, but if I just run that command with even a single dot epub, it once 
again provides usage information, such as
ebook-convert peter-bergen-the-rise-and-fall-of-osama-bin-laden.epub
Usage: ebook-convert input_file output_file [options]

Convert an e-book from one format to another.

input_file is the input and output_file is the output. Both must be specified 
as the first two arguments to the command.

The output e-book format is guessed from the file extension of output_file. 
output_file can also be of the special format .EXT where EXT is the output file 
extension. In this case, the name of the output file is derived from the name 
of the input file. Note that the filenames must not start with a hyphen. 
Finally, if output_file has no extension, then it is treated as a folder and an 
"open e-book" (OEB) consisting of HTML files is written to that folder. 
Back again live, if it were guessing, it should have converted this, so please, 
what am I missing? I even have a script to knock out all spaces in file names, 
replace with a dash. Thanks so much in advance
Chime