diff --git a/src/calibre/ebooks/conversion/preprocess.py b/src/calibre/ebooks/conversion/preprocess.py
index d1d275eb97..b35a163044 100644
--- a/src/calibre/ebooks/conversion/preprocess.py
+++ b/src/calibre/ebooks/conversion/preprocess.py
@@ -453,27 +453,14 @@ class HTMLPreProcessor(object):
         if not getattr(self.extra_opts, 'keep_ligatures', False):
             html = _ligpat.sub(lambda m:LIGATURES[m.group()], html)
 
-        if getattr(self.extra_opts, 'sr3_search', None):
-            try:
-                rules.insert(0,  (re.compile(self.extra_opts.sr3_search), self.extra_opts.sr3_replace))
-            except:
-                import traceback
-                print 'Failed to parse sr3-search regexp'
-                traceback.print_exc()
-        if getattr(self.extra_opts, 'sr2_search', None):
-            try:
-                rules.insert(0, (re.compile(self.extra_opts.sr2_search), self.extra_opts.sr2_replace))
-            except:
-                import traceback
-                print 'Failed to parse sr2-search regexp'
-                traceback.print_exc()
-        if getattr(self.extra_opts, 'sr1_search', None):
-            try:
-                rules.insert(0, (re.compile(self.extra_opts.sr1_search), self.extra_opts.sr1_replace))
-            except:
-                import traceback
-                print 'Failed to parse sr1-search regexp'
-                traceback.print_exc()
+        for search, replace in [['sr3_search', 'sr3_replace'], ['sr2_search', 'sr2_replace'], ['sr1_search', 'sr1_replace']]:
+            search_pattern = getattr(self.extra_opts, search, '')
+            if search_pattern:
+                try:
+                    search_re = re.compile(search_pattern)
+                    rules.insert(0,  (search_re, getattr(self.extra_opts, replace, '')))
+                except Exception as e:
+                    self.log.error('Failed to parse %s regexp because %s' % (search, e))
 
         end_rules = []
         # delete soft hyphens - moved here so it's executed after header/footer removal