FALLEN AT THE FIRST HURDLE?

It's nearing the end of January and I've finally managed to find an evening without anything happening. Husband out eating curry with friends, a perfect time to get WOTW transposed to kindle ready for it's launch on-line.
I've done the formatting before a few years ago with Underworld, but that was only a very short story without illustrations and chapter headings or indexes. How hard could it be?

It turns out quite hard.
First action. Register new title for kindle with Amazon.
Complete on-line form. Took a couple of minutes to figure out appropriate words for metatags (that's key words to those non-IT)
Next - upload your image.
Loaded. - "not the correct size needs 1000 pixels". Amazon go on to suggest using their Create Cover software. Only problem is it won't let you load a completed cover just the illustration to which it then adds your details in a bewildering array of inappropriate designs, colours and layouts. Most of which either chop Onk the troll's head or legs off, or obliterate the image completely in a pastal shade of green, pink or blue!

Next try to alter own cover copy to required size of 1,000 pixels. Nope doesn't like that either, for some reason it still ends up at 640 x 640 regardless. After several attempts at re-sizing and up-loading I admit defeat and give up on that idea. I decide to format the text instead.

Second action.  In order to format for kindle the manuscript needs to be in .doc format. Easy-peasy. I   google a source on-line, Catherine Ryan Howard, who looks to be a real whizz on this kindle stuff. I'm set.

First find the final, final version of WOTW on my computer. Easier said than done, despite all the dating etc. I can locate 5 copies dated September 2015, where I obviously became paranoid as it got closer to the book launch and panicked about being able to keep safe copies. I know I also saved several versions to a separate hard drive plus copied some into my e-mail draft folder and sent one to myself at work for good measure. Those data pirates weren't going to take my book alive - Oh no!

Problem is now I can't identify which is the most recent as some are actually dated and timed the same.
I know the last ever versions were the ones the formatter did. Find those and tah-da! (as Boots would say)
four copies located, soft version and final versions. All four are .pdf which I can't change back to .doc let alone .docx.
Over to the IT genius that is my son. He tries everything and finally resorts to me emailing me a copy so he can 'play' tomorrow.

Sadly this means I'm no nearer getting WOTW to kindle by the end of the month and Amazon also state it has to be submitted 10 days before publication - that's too late now - bah!

Next stop fivesquid again?