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Originally Posted by Susan
Of course, I only read novels on my Kindle/Kindle apps.
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Well, that just puts you firmly among the vast majority. And, from a presentation point of view, I have long held that authors (or Indie Publishers) have no choice but to also become competent in xhtml/css... all eBooks have html "inside" and, with Amazon's decision to upgrade from AZW (MOBI) to a new format that is practically raw html/css, the reasons become even stronger.
For novels, the re-flowable layout needed for any eBook is really very simple. As stated, it's chapter headings, paragraph spacing, some simple graphics handling, the ability to create centering or indenting, a way to make ToCs look other than ugly, yet still work properly... The css subset allowed today is adequate for those simple tasks, but those wanting to publish books that include more complex handling of graphics do have a harder time. I'm afraid that the days of expecting other specialist tradies like Typesetters or Printers to handle those awkward problems have gone.
It ain't rocket science... but it's amazing how many authors are crying "unfair" – they want to simply write and have someone else take care of the publishing details. That's why firms like Smashwords have such a huge following. It's also why so many eBooks have such dreadful page layout.