The ebooks we work on are often very old, and have been illustrated various times over the years. We don't want to have to pick and choose a single set of illustrations, nor do we want to forced to constantly justify exceptions for everyone's pet book, so we just have a blanket "no decorative illustrations" policy.

Note that this only refers to decorative illustrations, which is not the same as an illustration required to understand the text. As someone pointed out elsewhere, books like Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie, which can include narrative-critical illustrations like a map of a murder scene, or nonfiction which can often have relevant pictures but are not "illustrated" in the decorative sense, get to keep their images.

I would argue that, where the book is illustrated by the author, you should keep those illustrations.

(I'm against the no-illustrations policy in general, but illustration by the author seems like an especially clear case.)

yes, this seems to me to make sense, contextually. If you did Piranesi on architecture, it wouldn't make sense to exclude his drawings. or Ronald Searle's diary of his time in the PoW camps in Japan, or Edward Ardizzone's war diaries, or the sketches by "DD" watkins in his books.. or heaps of others.

arthur rackham's illustrations for childrens books, just like e.h. shepards for winnie-the-pooh, or Quentin Blake for his contributions to childrens books: its senseless to re-publish them without these illustrations (when the IP becomes available, of course)

I was imagining an illustration-free version of Dr. Seuss.

What about texts where there are more or less “canonical” illustrations? Like, for an edition of Bleak House by Charles Dickens, it’s just not the same without the sketches by “Phiz” that were present in the original publication. Same with John Tenniels illustrations of Alice in Wonderland.

Amazing project by the way. Can’t believe I just heard about it today, will dig into your catalogue with excitement!

I super respect your thoughtful principles. the focus has clearly paid off!