Kindle Self-Publishing - need to know

This post is for newbies who want to dabble into Amazon KDP to self-publish their own digital ebook.  Amazon KDP's have certain requirements when you create the ebook, I find that although Microsoft Word does an adequate job, over use of Word's features will create ALOT of problems.

The reason is because of many different kindle devices and kindle viewers working on other devices like android and iOS devices.  You no longer can dictate formatting and page numbers.  User selectable font sizes also causes further headaches.

In short, Use basic Table of Contents features. User Heading1 for all your chapters and Body Text for all you main text.  Avoid formatting words wtih font or font sizes. (bold and italics are fine)

If possible, fine re-usable templates and conversion tools. I found one called Alkinea which works using Openoffice or LibreOffice.  Basically, just the the template, then use the tool to convert to filename.mobi format and upload to Amazon KDP