Explaining the project and content at length is always a good thing.
Derek and I differ in approach but yes, in general, you need to master EPUB as a format before you can successfully export anything but the simplest project. Even then, if you don't understand the "one text flow" rule, a short project will be just as poorly rendered on export.
The summary list I pointed to is a good beginning of what you need to understand, but it doesn't contain much specific information.
Tutorials can be quite variable. Many out there are either outdated, use unnecessarily complex or fussy methods or emphasize all the wrong things. The one Derek pointed out is fine, but it is skimming a lot of very complex steps and trying to get across several very complex steps with greatly simplified explanation. (Each one of those steps needs, as a start, a full tutorial on its own.)
I would focus on getting a simple project successfully built and exported to EPUB, using Thorium Reader (and perhaps Kindle Reader) as your final proof. When you've mastered the how, and styles as they pass through to EPUB, you can expand and re-structure and re-format your whole book.
It sounds like a very worthwhile project in itself, and (from all different perspectives) we'll be glad to help you complete it.
Use whatever resources are accessible and make sense to you, with two points in mind: anything more than about 2 years old (or undated) is probably wrong in some crucial way. And focus on help that begins with using InDesign; there is a large faction that uses other, far less reliable approaches and even considers ID unsuitable for EPUB, mostly from misunderstood technical reasons.
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