[haysRNZ]

I am 75, retired, and an author. My books have all been published via KDP's print on demand or Kindle e-book formats.
What makes me unusual is I have no interest in making income from my books, but I do want to see them get to an audience of bright older teens and young adults. I am thinking of packaging my e-books and a few dozen essays I've written on a USB flash drive, contracted for multiple copies, and mailing them to potential readers. I may also put all these on a web page for free downloading. Kindle is not a good format for this, but I think epubs are, and I can readily do epub versions.
Question 1: is this a bad idea? Am I overlooking something important?
Question 2: is epub the format to use? (I suppose I could instead go with something else.
Question 3: my contractor first sent me a version in epub that had the cover page embedded in the epub. KDP required producing a different version with a separate file for the cover. Should my distribution epub have the cover embedded or separate?

Robert L. Hays, Arizona