Well, it's pretty easy in Kindle. Amazon tells you to download 'MobiCreator', a freebie, and when you have your text looking good, go in to MobiCreator and open your text document et voila' It is much harder to master the 'Kindle Upload Pages' on Amazon than to get the book into the right format.

And, if you don't have a Kindle, there is a free download for AppleMac (which I think you use) and Windows. If you use Ubuntu, like I do, it's more difficult but still not mind shattering.

The cover you best pay for. Joe90's daughter does a mean line in covers at a good price but I believe she is devoting time to her studies right now.

It is important to get the cover well designed, and by a graphic designer who knows what it is to be used for.

I put a book up, 'The Boy Who Swallowed a Monster' and the cover, which I paid for some years ago, looked dreadful. So I tried to design one myself and that looks dreadful.

The best price seems to be £0.99p which gives you about 34p, I think, for yourself. But there are plenty of other on YWO who have done much better than I on Kindle and I sure the will advise you

David

You do not need a spine or back cover, just a front cover. The front cover obviously needs to look good, the same as for a physical book, but it also needs to look good shrunk down to a thumbnail on Amazon. Also on the kindle it's self - although less important - the cover gets reduced to about eight shades of grey.
I found that fancy texts and shadows don't work.

As for formats, Kindle as mentioned, then when you've mastered that, smashwords, which converts it to lots of formats and sends it to Apple, Sony, Barnes & Noble and a few others.

Formatting the book, there's loads of information out there, but in essence it boils down to:
1. Never have more than four returns in a row.
2. Never use the tab key at all, ever.
3. No special characters (if it's not printed on your keyboard, don't use it.
3. Don't use justified


Blurb: Yes you need one, but it doesn't go within the text of the book (or on a cover.) You send it with the submission.

ISBN, for Amazon (Kindle) you don't need one.
You don't have to have one for smashwords either, but if you don't they cannot submit it to some of the distributors. (But they will give/sell you one)


Selling price, the wisdom I've read on here suggests under 99p for good sales, and that seems to have been historically true. But I've also read from a number of people that they were disappointed with their 99p read and serves themselves right for buying a cheap read, with words to the effect they will be judging a book not by it's cover but by it's price.
I feel, that the 99p book has had it's day and you need to charge more to show your book is quality. - But this is only my theory and to date my book (at £2.99) has had very few sales, so I'm probably wrong


If you have any questions, just ask, as I am a seasoned professional at this. (been doing it nearly a month) -

Sulcus! Welcome to the ebook fold!
It really is easy to do it yourself. You don't have to pay money to anyone to format it. Its very self-explanatory and Perry has listed the points perfectly. Cover is obvious and you have that handled.
Price? I have vacillated between 99cents and 2.99 cents in Kindle USA. But I am sticking with 99 cents and allowing Kindle to call the associated price in the UK. My third novel may be priced at 2.99. The nice thing is that you can change your price when the mood strikes.
Smashwords is a little more difficult and I don't think there's any point in doing it if you don't aim for Premium Catalogue status. That gets you onto all the major catalogues: Apple, Kobo, Nook etc. Otherwise you are restricted to just the Smashwords catalogue. An ISBN is part of Smashwords but they offer you a free one.
Being e-published was a good thing for me. But I will always run a POD version concurrently. Go for it and I can't wait to buy your title! http://www.pruebatten.com/

You have to remember that ereaders are popular with the older generation, one of the reasons for this is the ability to increase the font size; so a tab, or a 1" indent that looks fine on a page, with a large font may push the first word right across the page. -

Surprised your mate has found this, I'm frequently flicking back and forth through the pages of a chapter, though you do have too do it page by page, rather than just keeping your finger on the page you're reading as in a real book. That said, it's easy to put numerous bookmarks on the Kindle, which it goes to pretty much instantly, so when there's something that you're likely to keep referring to (such as a map) it's easy to find.