title_body: Body Text Formatting and Text Indentation for Kindle eBooks
upvoted_answer: You can certainly specify custom fonts for Kindle books; that's what section 3.1.9 is all about. Section 3.1.1 is only talking about the things that it mentions:
  
  
  Forced alignment (because Amazon would rather force the ancient print relic of justified text throughout)
  Body text size
  Bold and italics on body text
  White or black color for body text
  White or black background color for body text
  Oh, and customers say they like being able to change fonts, so maybe think about that before deciding to include your own fonts
  
  
  The last point is the only thing that talks about choice of typeface, and it's purely advisory. Note also that  "body text" refers to the main text styling of the document, not any text that appears in the &lt;body&gt; of the document (which would obviously be everything).
  
  As far as p.body {text-indent: 1.2em;} not working (that's my preferred value, anyway): I've not had that problem. If you can provide some of the relevant xhtml and css, I'd be happy to see if there are any errors I can spot. Using a CSS validator is also a great option.