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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Damon Griffin" data-source="post: 1057063" data-attributes="member: 3568">Either is fine, so long as art styles do not clash in the case of multiple artists.  I think I'd find a book jointly illustrated by Larry Elmore and John Kovalic to be distracting (in a bad way) though both are among my favorite artists and I might conceivably buy a product based on either artist's solo participartion.Depends on the subject matter of the illlustration, but as a general rule, B&W works fine.  I suspect sales of a $25 softcover will be better than those for a $32 harcover, and I wonder what the (presumably) increased production costs of a hardcover would do to net profits. Thanks to the 25% discount I enjoy at my FLGS, I'm able to cast a vote for a $24 hardcover.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />As I think others have noted, there's an important distinction between illustration and decoration.  If the image is actually illustrating some point -- making the material more clear than the text alone coud do -- then a small number of full page illustrations is welcome.  If it's just a pretty picture, it's probably a waste of space.  Full-page color plates by Larry Elmore depicting...well, almost anything, really...might be an exception to this, but that's just my opinion.  Keep the full page pics to a minimum.This is exactly what I meant by illustration vs. decoration.  You want every piece of art to be an illustration, not just a pretty picture.I think in this sort of product, art is "better" for being illustrative rather than merely decorative.  I can enjoy art for its own sake, but prefer to do so in an art book, fantasy calendar, 90-card set or some other such thing, rather than in a gaming sourcebook.  The cover of a gaming book can be merely decorative -- though ideally it should at least suggest the contents of the book -- but interior images should be illustrative.Showing a lone miner when talking about mines is probably not helpful.  Showing a cutaway view of a mine, with several miners using different sorts of equipment to do different tasks, might well be.  Two people arguing around a fire I can easily imagine on my own.  For a larger gathering like a Viking 'althing' I might appreciate some imagery.  Rule of thumb: if you can give someone a decently thorough description of something in, say, 50 [unambiguous] words or less, you probably don't need a picture.</blockquote>

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