Makingamark's Top Ten Art Books in July 2011

After a two month gap, I've updated my two Squidoo sites for the best art books in June/July 2011.

• Makingamark's Top 10 Fine Art Books lists both the best selling and the top rated art books in April.  The website explains how these are identified.
• The Best NEW Art Books lists all the fine art books in the top 100 books in the Amazon Arts and Photography category that were published in June or July(or the very beginning of August for pre-publication sales)

On both sites, I've added in the rankings and number of reviews on Amazon and Goodreads to give you another another couple of benchmarks.

What's new this month

The top ten fine art books

The major change is the introduction of a new category and the elimination of the overlap with The Best New Art Books
 
There is now a category devoted to Creativity and Artistic Practice - which is intended to focus on the process of making art.  I fear it may continue to be dominated forever by the two books which are included as the best seller and the top rated!  However it seemed a nonsense to have a site about top art books which ignored two perennial best sellers - as in they continue to sell well.

• The Artist's Way
• Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking

I've moved the top ranked best seller and top rated to the The Best New Books.  This month these are

• Artist's Journal Workshop: Creating Your Life in Words and Pictures by: Cathy Johnson 
• Stealing Rembrandts: The Untold Stories of Notorious Art Heists by: Anthony M. Amore, Tom Mashberg - this book gets it for the sheer quantity of reviews it has generated to date.  Reviews are of course highly influential as to placements and sales on Amazon.

The best new books

Given the lengthy break due to being away and not being able to do the charts at the end of the month, I've tried to go back 90 days rather than 30 days and look at all those books published in May, June and July.  I've also listed all those that seemed worth noting in The Best New Art Books

Two new (ie one new and one and "not so new") drawing books have made a big recent impression on the charts.  These are:

• Artist's Journal Workshop: Creating Your Life in Words and Pictures - This book seemed to me the new art books which was the top best seller among new books last month.  It includes a lot of contributions by art bloggers who will be familiar to readers of this blog.  I've got mine on order and am looking forward to reviewing it.
• In addition Figure Drawing for All It's Worth by Andrew Loomis makes a welcome return to proper print.  It's been available off and on online, but this is a formal reprint of an old standard - and it's attracting a lot of buyer.

There have been lots of recent publications about artists. I predict that the book which will become a best seller is My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz: Volume One, 1915-1933.

What's stayed the same this month

On the whole, in terms of Makingamark's Top 10 Fine Art Books, this seems to be a month where there's been a bit more jockeying for position by books which consistently sell well and get good ratings. 

However we have reached the summer season and the lull before the big pre-Christmas push!