Hi there wzl!

Thanks for the comment - I'll try my best to answer your questions to the best of ability.

The table of contents seems very much like it would handle most of the basic and i'd be interested if it extends on those. From that alone it seems just like a maybe more elaborate version of that one pixeljoint thread

- The pixeljoint tutorial thread is very good... But it is also fairly thin and doesn't speak at all about the pixel art's context within a game.  The book goes into far more depth and is streamlined toward creating for games - with a great deal of information on creating tilesets. 

Is this a book targeted at beginners only or can experienced artists get something out of it as well?

- This book is targeted at both beginners and old hands but I think that more experience Artists are going to walk away with different things.  A lot of what is covered has to do with working efficiently and balancing high artistic quality with speed of production. 

Someone who's been to Art school might jump past the chapter showing the properties of light and shadow but may get a lot out of how to translate those skills into pixels.  On the flip side, a Pixel Art pro might get some great tools for efficiency and project flow for a game dev project.

What kind of quality can we expect from the description and illustrations?

- This isn't really an attempt for me to flex my art muscles so much as an earnest attempt to explain some of the craft. There are roughly 400 images and most of them are explaining technique (rather than showing off a pretty image).  Most things are shown in pictures and there are whole sections where text is minimal; just there to explain the images. 

Since indies, especially newer, inexperienced ones, are often times broke, i can imagine they'd like to see what they'll be getting before investing a sum like that.

While I hear the sentiment, I feel that people are likely to be very pleased with the purchase.  I've met plenty of super talented Pixel Artists that are make great work - but are figuratively killing themselves because they work so inefficiently.  If this book can speed up (or reduce) the workflow, then it should be well worth the price...

Not that I'm at all biased on the matter