I wrote up my notes about creating ebooks in the various formats, partly so I remember and partly because it saves someone else figuring this all out!
Thanks for this writeup! I’m actually going through this process now, so this is very timely.
I just bought your book last night. Looking forward to digging in… 
The evolving standards, procedures, etc. of ebook creation seem like a great topic to build a thriving community around, if one doesn’t exist already. Such a group would probably be a high value audience for ads and services.
One thing you didn’t mention was Sigil: if you’re going to work on ePubs directly, that’s probably the best tool around.
And, for those who just want to get something up on Amazon from their Word file, there’s LiberWriter 
http://www.liberwriter.com