Most of those resources only cover text-heavy books in paperback format. i currently write an astronomy book (many high res images and illustrations) in a large A3(ish) format. the whole process is completely different.
for example:
- you should NOT let a third party print the book for you without any control over the quality of the final product. amazone print on demand does a decent enough job with paperback text books, but should probably not be used for printing anything else.
- unfortunately there is no real (OSS)alternative to CS software like illustrator and indesign when it comes to actually creating the book. yes, you CAN do it with other tools - but if you want to keep your sanity, DON'T. ( I tried and ultimately gave up on the idea of using anything but adobe software....)
- color management is a nightmare. prepare for some real headaches when the first test prints come back and everything that should be "100% black" comes back in different shades and color variations of dark grey.
- if you want any layout-heavy book to be easily translatable into different languages, plan for it from the get go. text like small info-boxes underneath images tend to vary in length a lot from language to language. some languages produce much longer texts than english, others are more compact. this can become a significant problem if all your layouts rely on character-perfect text placement and fixed lengths.
- binding techniques vary from one printing company to the next. it is advisable to choose a company early on, so that you can adjust your layout process accordingly. a simple change to color management, paper format or line characteristics can become a huge problem, when you have to change dozens or hundreds of embedded illustrations.
- you dont need amazons print on demand at all: most printing companies let you put in a small initial order (like 200 books). sell those first, then use the money to order more. margins are great if you actually publish yourself, so you can easily scale up your orders without risk of financial overextension. if you do it with the same company this should not take longer than 2 weeks. that kind of response time is totally acceptable.
Edit: I should add that this only works for books with a high retail price (like 50+ dollar)