@kaa I've never tried Kindle Create, but I agree that Amazon's design tools are pretty limited. For books with images, it seems most folks use InDesign or Affinity Publisher to create their layouts these days.
@Cheri for Amazon I'm focusing on the digital versions only. Do you import using pdfs? I went the export from pages to word to Kindle Create route.
@kaa I have no idea whether this still works but it used to be possible to import an ePub into Kindle Direct Publishing (at the point where you’d normally upload a Word document). The last time I did it was about 5 years ago. The KDP documentation didn’t mention the possibility — it was an undocumented feature, I guess. Kindle have completely overhauled their formats in the meantime, so it’s likely that this no longer works. However …
Since you’re starting off in Pages, I’d skip the conversion to Word and export straight to ePub, then try to import the ePub into KDP (or whatever it’s called now). If it works (big if) it could save you a bit of trouble. (And if not, sorry for wasting your time.)
@kaa No, these days I give my books to my husband and he runs them (as Word Docs) through a program he wrote. It uses Pandoc to convert my word files into EPUBs and it uses stylesheets for each series. Back when I was using publicly available tools, I uploaded my Word docs to either Draft2Digital or Smashwords to get an EPUB back. But my books don't have photos, graphs, or charts, so I don't know how well those tools work for complex content.
@Cheri yeah that sounds blissful :). My books have charts, tables, images, full page images. I guess its just the price to pay. As an aside, Amazon are pushing the whole KDP select and go exclusive on the digital front. Have you gone down that route?
@kaa Half my books are in KDP select right now. It's decent for cozy mysteries but I haven't heard of any non-fiction authors going that route. My hunch is that you'd probably be better off going wide with a distributor like Draft2Digital to reach the other stores like Google Play, Apple, and Kobo. But KDP select offers a 90 day term, so you can always try it and change your mind if you like.