I've not had time to update this site each month since March although nearly pulled it off twice! Hence I think what I'm going to be doing in future is display the best new books in the last three months and that way I'm updating a few at a time.
I do however regularly maintain the following in which new books are listed by the month they are published - and you get to see which books are coming up for publication!
The Main Changes
Fewer art books from print book publishers: It seems to me that fewer art books are being published by the major publishers. I can still see a lot of self-published books around but I'm not persuaded that many of these are high quality
Manipulation of Amazon ratings: I've also observed what I regard as manipulation of Amazon. One book in the list somehow managed to acquire 134 customer reviews within 3-4 days of publication. When you see a very high number you have so fast you have to wonder what that was all about. Is it genuine? Who knows?
The Kindlisation of art books continues. I don't tend to list these as new books unless they have also been out of print for some time. I've also still to see many publishers who have managed the transition from print to ebook successfully. I've seen a lot which are "so so" and some which are downright poor.
Did you know that Amazon now sells more ebooks that print books in the UK? eBooks outsold print books in the USA4 years after the introduction of the Kindle. It only took 2 years in the UK
For every 100 print books sold through the site, Amazon said it sold 114 titles for its Kindle e-reader device.This of course is "hype" by Amazon as an awful lot of those who are reading ebooks - like me - are not dong this on a Kindle. We're using our iPads!
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| Valentin Serov (Best Of Collection) |
Of all the books in the list I think the one I'm most interested in buying is about the Master Russian Impressionist painter Valentin Serov. I keep trying to get to grips with the Russian painters and this particular one reminds me very much of John Singer Sargent so I should really try to find out more about him.
Another reason is because the image websites don't have a lot of images of his paintings eg see paintings by Valentin Serov here
I'm also quite intrigued by the "look inside" Blogging for Creatives: How designers, artists, crafters and writers can blog to make contacts, win business and build success by: Robin Houghton. I don't there's much it contains for me to learn but I'm interested in how it's presented.
You can see what I've actually bought this year in Making A Mark - My Book List
More about Best Art Books
You can find out more about my "best books" series of websites in Making A Mark's Art Book Lists
