: Re: Are illustrations in novels frowned upon? Lately I've been thinking that I don't know of a single novel that has illustrations in it. I've tried finding out the reason why, and came across

@Cody1607638

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If you're one of the lucky few with talents both in text and image, enjoy it and be sure to take advantage of it. But you should recognize some things:

First, in the online world we frequently rely on photographs and stock images to illustrate our point. That might work in the ebook world, but you have spend extra time and money to obtain/clear the rights.

Image production might take away time and effort from storytelling. Illustrations often don't enhance the story but merely serve as window dressing. It doesn't make a mediocre story prettier. If you're using stock images, I personally think it looks tacky inside an ebook.

Formatting images on ebooks can be hard and require testing on different display sizes. Think of this: How can my visual idea work on both a phone display and a tablet display?

It's not the same thing, but I do an online story project which involves selecting public domain art as evocative illustrations for my stories. I think it works, but I make it a point not to make the image subject relate directly to the story themselves. (The images are metaphorical and abstract). I am now involved in making an ebook version of these stories, and I think the images will definitely enhance the ebook -- though the task of testing images in ebooks on different display sizes can be daunting. (Over the last few years I have developed some formatting tricks about images in ebooks. I describe my best one in this blogpost).

I don't think ebooks have taken advantage of text/image blending yet (mainly for technical reasons). There's a lot of potential here. I've noticed that a lot of teen/middle school fiction use hybrid forms in their printed books that look like doodling. I think that using art that looks like doodling in a story can add value to it -- especially if it's consistent with the protagonist's point of view. At the same time, while this is easy to format in a printed book, on an ebook it would be more challenging.

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