The books about the history of cartography, and the intro geography texbooks I mentioned would be my suggestion. Like I said, I didn't learn it this way so I don't have much advice.
I haven't found anything for the history of cartography, but I have found "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Geography". Hopefully that will be a good choice. xD

They are just SVG images. You can load them into any editor that supports SVG. They do have some extensions that should give you a basic layer structure to build from if you load it in Inkscape, which is the editor I use. Both are intended for full globes so either would be a good starting point. The Mercator template is probably easier to work with. I'm working on a Ruby program to generate graticules for the Equidistant Conic projection suitable for continents.
Oh, so there are no special rules to follow? Like placement? I'll try drawing my world on it now, was messing with the files. GIMP loads them (good that I did not encounter some errors -- my GIMP acts weird since its reinstall), tried Inkscape but it won't install for me. >.>

Ruby program? As in the Ruby programming language? If so, I have heard of it, and seen it in action. I have not learned it, of course. I give you, sir (?), a super thumbs up for that and giant "good luck".

Alex~