05 illustrate, illustrate and illustrate illustrate, illustrate and illustrate in in this article, we have said this article, we have said earlier that earlier that illustrations are quite a difficult aspect of the illustrations are quite a difficult aspect of the book production process, the most book production process, the most difficult. the book layout can also be said to be difficult. the book layout can also be said to be in a close contest with that in a close contest with that illustrations create. these two activities are both illustrations create. these two activities are both creatively dependent on each other, so we creatively dependent on each other, so we decided that we would lead with illustrations decided that we would lead with illustrations without any layout requirements. if not if not the difficulty the difficulty without great illustrations that drive your story, without great illustrations that drive your story, everything else seems to be more difficult. to everything else seems to be more difficult. to get an effective layout you need to give your get an effective layout you need to give your contributors high quality content so they can contributors high quality content so they can be imaginative. take the time to find the right be imaginative. take the time to find the right illustrator otherwise this workflow won’t work. illustrator otherwise this workflow won’t work. we wanted to self-publish and take advantage of the ebook market and distribution we wanted to self-publish and take advantage of the ebook market and distribution channels, so we preferred electronic artists that used tools we were familiar with such channels, so we preferred electronic artists that used tools we were familiar with such as adobe photoshop, illustrator and corel's products. this will be a controversial statement, but using electronic artists versus traditional art mediums offered us many advantages: leveraging illustration layers for other digital assets (e.g., book trailers, website imagery, infographics and blog posts) help repurpose the investment. if an artist doesn't work out or gets too busy, you have the art to work with in a standard format that many creative professionals know and use. we wanted to write once and publish many. if the book grows and gets popular and a publisher wants to help retool the book, then you have access to all the art and layers and in an industry portable format. artists on crowdsourcing platforms will sign over creative licensing rights, in most cases contrary to many popular illustrators in traditional publishing arrangements. learn the difference between vector and raster graphics for your illustrations. we were traveling with limited bandwidth, so working with digital illustrations was easier for us to manage. we made changes with our artists via file sharing programs like dropbox and wetransfer. www.cashcortez.com cashandcortez