The Best NEW Art Books

In 2012, people wanting to buy good art books online are faced with a lot of choice but little guidance.

(1) Amazon Book Categories are INCREDIBLY CONFUSING. This is because those listing books often put them in multiple and incorrect categories.

(2) Amazon.com also keeps changing its categories which is now making it even more difficult to find good art books! For example, "Arts & Photography" now includes music which has destroyed the value of the top 100 books.

(3) In 2012 the lists are becoming swamped with new books from self-publishers. Some of these are very good and very welcome but a lot, on closer examination, are not.

THE RESULT: It's really not easy to spot the best selling and top rated NEW art books from the lists

Which is why I create this COMPENDIUM OF BEST NEW ART BOOKS to help people trying to keep in touch with what has just been published

Putting this compendium together takes quite a bit of time! The books listed on this site are a personal interpretation of the listings found on a combination of amazon.com and amazon.co.uk and other sources where ratings and popularity can be identified.

In principle each month, up to five recently published or about to publish books will be listed for each of the following categories - but the category is not included if no books are published

The aim is to use the following categories of Drawing, Painting and Artists and then to supplement with additional categories depending on what's being published.

* New Drawing Books - This category is about books about fine art drawing for artists and those wanting to learn how to draw. It excludes drawing books for children, fantasy/comic art and applied books for commercial artists and animators

* New Painting Books - This category is about books about fine art painting for artists and those wanting to learn how to paint or improve their painting. It excludes painting books for children and applied books for commercial artists

* New Books about Artists - This category is about books which are about fine artists - from any movement, period or style. It excludes books for children and commercial artists. It includes books about art history.

As these are new books all descriptions are based on the publishers product descriptions with some editing, available reviews and inspecting the books for myself where this is possible

This website is updated each month for the best selling and top rated art books in each category.

Commentary on the changes this month:

* An awful lot of cheap, self-published books continue to ride high in the charts because of their price not their value. Trying to identify decent art books is becoming akin to wading through treacle

* The Art of Urban Sketching (published 1 February) sold out in a month and had to go straight to reprint. It just goes to show that a book with good content can do really well

* Something has happened to how the Music books get ranked with the Arts & Photography listings on Amazon - there's a lot less of them!