I think that Larry said somewhere that he made the black & white book to also help out aspiring artists In their drawings and preliminary work. So he was picking out a fair amount of behind-the-scenes type prelim drawings, sketches, to more full rendered drawings and inks fom various commissions and commercial pieces to include.
I think his intention there was to show how he would do you multiple drawings and then arrange them to see how it might look for a final before embarking on the oil painting.
I personally don't feel like this was infringing on anything from his final painting that we got a print out of.  If anything, I would say it would make our limited prints even more valuable.

Well!  I have an authoritative answer (I hope)!



Here's part of the actual signed contract with Larry Elmore.  As you can see in section 4, we only had reproduction rights for five years.  This was standard for all our Limited Edition prints.  I believe the reason for this was because it gave the artist a chance to make more money off of the artwork later and helped reduce our costs.  Price was a major consideration for why we did these prints in the first place as most people could not afford a private commission.

As to the artwork appearing in his book, I'm personally thrilled.  It's not the whole piece, just a tease.  It likely makes them more valuable to collectors interested in his art. It also helps to authenticate our limited edition prints as genuine.  Thanks for pointing this out!