[AliceWonder]

I recently started the same journey. I am not using software, other than a text editor. I may go that route but I want to manually do things first to help me understand it better.

Understanding how to properly do metadata within the .opf file has been my personal most time consuming task, especially the Dublin Core stuff. Have to use one tag to define a creator and that creator has to have a unique ID and then you need a second meta tag to refine the dc:creator tag and associate the unique ID with the type of creator. e.g.

    <dc:creator id="editor">Alice Wonder</dc:creator>
    <dc:creator id="author0">Alice Wonder</dc:creator>
    <dc:creator id="author1">Enchantrix Brighton</dc:creator>
    <!-- princess andi illustration 1 -->
    <dc:creator id="illustrator01">Annabelle Brito</dc:creator>
    <!-- french maid with dusting brush -->
    <dc:creator id="illustrator02">Robert DeJesus</dc:creator>
    <!-- Misaki Ayuzawa portrait -->
    <dc:creator id="illustrator03">Kayleigh Vaughn</dc:creator>
    <!-- Rem Portrait -->
    <dc:creator id="illustrator04">Professor Purrv</dc:creator>
    <!-- princess andi illustration 2 -->
    <dc:creator id="illustrator05">Placeholder</dc:creator>
    <!-- back page illustration -->
    <dc:creator id="illustrator99">Gustavo Rezende</dc:creator>
      <!-- http://www.loc.gov/marc/relators/relacode.html -->
      <meta refines="#editor" property="role" scheme="marc:relators">edt</meta>
      <meta refines="#author0" property="role" scheme="marc:relators">aut</meta>
      <meta refines="#author1" property="role" scheme="marc:relators">ctb</meta>
      <meta refines="#illustrator01" property="role" scheme="marc:relators">ill</meta>
      <meta refines="#illustrator02" property="role" scheme="marc:relators">ill</meta>
      <meta refines="#illustrator03" property="role" scheme="marc:relators">ill</meta>
      <meta refines="#illustrator04" property="role" scheme="marc:relators">ill</meta>
      <meta refines="#illustrator05" property="role" scheme="marc:relators">ill</meta>
      <meta refines="#illustrator99" property="role" scheme="marc:relators">ill</meta>

I made comments to myself so I'd know who was what, etc. and so I could always find the URL with the marc:relators that are needed to refine the dc:creator tags.

Using the ePubCheck validator has GREATLY helped. It would give me errors and I could search google for the error string and 90% of the time find an explanation for the error and then have a better understanding of how ePub works.

I do use the editor that came with Calibre to run the ePubCheck validator (as a plugin) and I may at some point use that editor instead of just a text editor once I better understand ePub.

But anyway, understand the metadata was the biggest hurdle for me, the rest seems fairly easy to grasp.