Makingamark's Top Ten Art Books in November

This is the regular monthly update of Makingamark's Top 10 Fine Art Books.  I took a look at the top rated and best selling art books at the end of November and have updated and republished my website with the results.

The major news is that James Gurney's (Gurney Journey) new book Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter is having a major impact on the Making A Mark Chart and manages to get listed as the top book in three categories

• best selling book in Painting
• top rates new art book
• best selling new art book

Of course, the advantage of having an existing book which people highly rate (see Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist) is that sales of your second book come faster.  James new book didn't even publish until 30th November and this top art book position has been achieved on pre-sales!

The remainder of the top rated and best selling books are dominated by those books which have done well during the course of the year - which is not unusual to the run-up to Christmas.  My website includes listings of all those which have achieved a top spot since I started it in Spring this year. 

What's fascinating is how important the number of reviews are for keeping a book in the public eye.  The more people review a book, the longer its life and the more sales it achieves.

Just click a link and go straight to the category of your choice and find out which I think are the rest of the top 10 art books in November!

• DRAWING - Top Rated Drawing Book in November 2010
• DRAWING - Best Selling Drawing Book in November 2010
• PAINTING - Top Rated Painting Book in November 2010
• PAINTING - Best Selling Painting Book in November 2010
• ARTISTS - Top Rated Art Book in November 2010
• ARTISTS: Best Selling Art History Book in November 2010
• ART BUSINESS: Top Rated Art Book in November 2010
• ART BUSINESS - Best Selling Art Book in November 2010
• NEW BEST SELLER in November 2010
• NEW TOP RATED in November 2010
• PLUS - THE TOP 10 NEW ART BOOKS IN November

Remember these change every month - and what you see this month won't necessarily be there next month. 

Top New Art Books

What I'm finding more and more interesting each month is the final listing of the top new art books each month. 

This necessarily is somewhat partial and an edited version of the Amazon listing because of all the books I exclude to keep the focus on fine art for adults (eg I exclude all art books for kids or about illustration and for commercial illustrators, graphic designers etc).

The interesting new movers this month are three new books from North Light Books

• Pastel Pointers: Top 100 Secrets for Beautiful Paintings (based on Richard McKinley's Pastel pointers blog)
• 2011 Artist's and Graphic Designer's Market (Artist's & Graphic Designer's Market)
• Sketchbook Confidential: Secrets from the private sketches of over 40 master artists

The big message for me - and for publishers - is that you can take the contents of a blog which have already been published and use that as a core for a book which is then published on a commercial basis.....AND have a best seller!

Mind you the content has to be excellent too! ;)