Hi Old Vax Guy! I have fond memories of playing 'rogue' on a Vax.
My best advice is to go to the "Epub" forum and you will find a bunch of advice on making books in the epub format. There is a good editor called "Sigil" and a good tool that will manage these books called "Calibre".
HOWEVER: the kindle will not read .epub files. So Calibre (I believe) will convert them to .mobi which is what the Kindle likes.
With the competing reader formats - there is no 1 software solution to do what you want. So many people have standardized on the .epub format for editing/creating documents, then converting them to PDF, MOBI, etc. for their particular reader.
It IS a bit chaotic - but it is better than having 1 company dominate the industry with it's DRM infested concept of what is 'better' for us.
EDIT:
Below is a interesting article on ebook formatting you might like.
http://guidohenkel.com/2010/12/take-...ok-formatting/