The subject of a book, and how relevant its material stays over time, usually sets its price. Some books cost a lot on release and then lose value within a few years. Others cost a lot on release and gain value as time passes. Availability matters too. There are manuscripts that are centuries old and rare enough that nations have fought over who gets to keep them. Art books belong to the group that tends to appreciate, because a genuinely good art book holds its worth. Here is why that happens, and why the copies gathering dust on your shelf may be worth selling.
Art books are expensive
Most art books cost more than the average paperback. That is especially true when the book is written by a respected artist and author, and more so when you are collecting several titles from the same person. Fields like art, music, theatre, and film run expensive by nature, because students often have to buy costly books along with the equipment and tools they need to practise what the books teach. Good writers in these fields tend to recommend other excellent writers inside their own pages. Tracking down those recommended titles can be difficult, since they are frequently rare or pricey. So students end up spending both time and money to locate the books, then more money to actually own them.
You can sell art textbooks on Booksrun and spare someone else that whole ordeal. Doing so keeps rare books in circulation and makes them easier to find for the people who need them. If a title is no longer useful to you, selling it puts some cash in your pocket and frees up shelf space for other things.
There is also a quieter benefit to putting a book back into circulation. Second-hand markets work like a long tail: the many niche, low-demand titles that no shop would stock can, taken together, matter as much as the handful of bestsellers, provided a platform makes them findable. Chris Anderson made this point in The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More (2006), arguing that once online platforms remove shelf-space limits and help people discover niche offerings, those obscure items collectively rival the hits. Your out-of-print art book is exactly that kind of niche item.
Art books are rare
Unless you have been an art student yourself, and an enthusiastic one, you may not notice how scarce good art textbooks really are. Plenty of people write about authors strive to write art books but only a few get it right. Not many people are passionate enough about art to become reliable guides, which makes it hard to find someone who can recommend the good books at all. When you do find a strong art book, it may already be out of print, so getting a copy becomes a small quest in itself. And when a copy surfaces, it usually carries a high price, precisely because it is a quality book in short supply. Even so, art students who care about the craft will pay almost any price for something that pushes their skill to the next level.
So if you have art books at home that you no longer use, put them back into circulation by selling them online. If your book comes from an author whose work is valued, there is a real chance it will fetch good money.
How buyers judge a used book they cannot hold
When someone buys a rare art book online, they cannot flip through it first, so they lean on other signals: the seller’s rating, the condition notes, and the reviews left by earlier buyers. This is social proof at work. As Robert Cialdini explains in Influence, New and Expanded: The Psychology of Persuasion (2021), people decide what is correct by finding out what others think is correct, and reviews and ratings are the mechanism that carries that judgment. If you sell, describe the book honestly and grade its condition accurately. A buyer who trusts the description is a buyer who returns, and an accurate listing is worth more to your rating than an inflated one.
The same logic explains why being listed in a place people already check matters. A book (or a seller) that never appears where buyers browse might as well not exist. Curated categories and search work together here: how information is organised and labelled decides whether anyone can find it. Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville, and Jorge Arango make this case in Information Architecture: For the Web and Beyond (2015), treating browsing structured categories and searching as complementary ways people locate what they need. A well-titled, well-categorised listing is doing quiet work on your behalf.
Art books are timeless
We are well into the 21st century, yet if you study the arts, whether painting, drawing, film, theatre, or music, you will notice that most professors and students are not relying on books written in this century. Many of them still teach from books written in the 20th, 19th, and even 18th centuries. That makes such books rare simply because of how long ago they were published. As I noted earlier, very few authors manage to explain clearly what it takes to make a masterpiece. There are many writers in the field, but students and teachers keep returning to particular names for the clarity, the depth of explanation, and the quality of illustration in their work.
This is why an old art book can be surprisingly valuable. A colour theory text from decades ago or a printmaking manual long out of print may be the exact edition a student is hunting for, and the age that makes it hard to find is the same age that makes it worth paying for. The books people go back to earn that loyalty over years, not months, which is the opposite of a title whose value drains away after publication.
What to do with the books you already own
If you have art textbooks sitting unused, start by checking what they are actually worth online rather than guessing. A few practical points can help you get a fair result:
- Note the author and edition. A valued author or a specific early edition often drives the price far more than the subject alone.
- Grade the condition plainly. Mention any highlighting, cracked spines, or missing dust jackets, since honest notes protect your rating.
- Check whether the title is out of print. Scarcity is part of what a rare art book sells for.
- Photograph the cover and any distinguishing pages so buyers can see what they are getting.
On the off chance you own even older art textbooks, look up their true value before you assume they are worthless. You could be sitting on a book worth as much as a new phone, a television, a games console, or a set of kitchen utensils. Selling it clears your shelf, sends a scarce book to someone who needs it, and pays you for the trouble of having kept it safe.
