Vector or raster?

[Ascension]

Say you draw out a continent and put some stuff on it. Then, when you want to start putting names on things, you find that you have to enlarge it. In vector it's no problem. Then you want to put more stuff in and so you enlarge it again. Then when you want to have it printed you realize that it's too big so you need to shrink it. Again, no problem for vector. The problem is that all of those letters get smaller and smaller and when you print it they come out like blobs. If you want to print out just a section at a time then good. My advice is to do multiple maps...a world map, continent maps, kingdom maps, town maps, building maps. That way you only have to come up with names for stuff in areas where the story takes place instead of populating your entire world with details that no one will ever need or see. Know where your continents are, know where the kingdoms are, know where the story will go, and then just do up some quick sketches that take 5 minutes. That's all ya need to start writing, a rough outline - whether it be for the plot or for the map. Do detailed maps after the story has been written. Then you can decide what maps are important and what are not and that'll save ya a lot of time instead of drawing out every quaint backwater village and naming every little creek on five continents.

In the end, know what sort of size the book will be and just double that size for your map and never go larger than that...either vector or raster. If you don't know what size the book will be then go with paperback size, around 4 x 6 or 5 x 7. On the publisher side of things I have no idea what the industry standard would be so I don't know what they prefer.