Hello Lucy,
Thanks for your questions.
“I have seen a fine art website that offers Giclee prints of various artists. The prints available are both limited edition and open edition OF THE SAME IMAGE.”
If the limited and open editions are the same size, on the same substrate and neither is hand-embellished in any way, this makes no sense to me at all! If the editions were different sizes, the S/N larger than a smaller open edition and priced differently, I’d guess it is OK both ethically and legally. From the point of view of an art rep, I’d expect the open edition to cut into potential sales for the pricier version.
I wonder how current your Giclee pricing range info is.
The pricing range was taken from editions noted in the June and July issues of ART WORLD NEWS. I just got the August issue, did the same comparison throwing out the high ($2.76 sq. in.) and low (.47 sq. in.) figures and averaging the eleven left for a typical square inch cost of $1.48 retail. In both examples, I did not separate giclees on paper and on canvas, embellished vs. not embellished or try to “weight” the name value of the artists.
In the end, your sales record and how aggressively you market and promote your work will dictate what you can charge. If sales are slow or aren’t there at all, your prices are too high or you aren’t exposing your work to enough potential buyers or the right potential buyers. You can’t sell it if you don’t show it.
When I was on the road selling, I recommended to artists I represented that they price their giclees at .80 per square inch retail (.40 wholesale to my trade buyers) and found that very acceptable to the design trade because I made consistent sales. Prices and costs to print have increased since then and if I were repping today I’d suggest $1.00 per square inch retail, unless the artist was having trouble meeting the demands for his work. I found the ability to tell interior designers: “I can have this printed to your size specs” OR “if you feel there is a section of the painting (such as a nice vertical composition) that is a part of the artist’s horizontal composition that, too, can be done.” Once the image is digitized it’s easy for the printer to size or crop the image as required to make the sale. We arbitrarily set the edition size at 150 maximum and no matter what size was done to specs, it still counted against the 150 total.
Let’s talk numbers, based on actual sales I made as an art rep. If the designer ordered a 20” x 30” giclee, I sold it at wholesale for $240 (600 sq. in. x .40). The designer usually doubled and sold it to the client for $480. I took a 25% commission from the artist’s $240. The artist received $240 minus $60 or $180. The artist had to pay the print cost (at that time about $50) and ended up with $130. Is that fair? The artist can still sell the original for his or her going rate to a collector – take your $2.75 a square inch which equals $1,650. If an entire edition of 150 giclees were sold out through art reps or other “helpers” who charged a 25% commission the artist could potentially receive $130 x 150 or $19,500 plus $1,650 for the original = $21,150. Can you think of many other ways to make a living (honestly) that could possibly return that income for that amount of time spent in creation? But suppose only 20 giclees were ever sold, that’s still $2,600 plus $1,650 and you are already working on your next painting, which also has a potential equal to it’s quality and how willing you are to show and sell.
When I sold my own original multiples (using a kind of stencil process, not giclees), I didn’t specify an edition size. I just numbered each print consecutively using roman numerals and sold it until the market dried up or I got sick of the image.
If you’ve read Barney Davey’s perceptive blog, www.artprintissues.com, he has raised some valid points about the whole issue of limited editions vs. open editions and the “value” attached to what is basically a marketing strategy that has little to do with the artistic merit of the work.
I’m impressed with your creative idea of adhering canvas repros to the centers of porcelain plates – they are handsome. I haven’t seen other artists doing this and they could also appeal to Plate Collectors - a whole ‘nother group of buyers. I’m no expert on Collector Plates, but most I’ve seen offered by major manufacturers are “limited” editions, in one way or another, sometimes by total numbers, often many thousand, sometimes by “firing days” (both strike me as a phony “hype” designed to make them more valuable than they really are.) Your plates, on the other hand, could legitimately be limited editions. Have you thought about signing and numbering on the back of the plates?
Again, thanks for your questions,
Dick Harrison www.salestipsforartists.com |