The news that Bev Doolittle's latest limited edition piece, Beyond Negotiations, is sold out at the publisher inspired some thoughts from me on my blog today. When a popular piece is sold out at the publisher, its next step is to sell out at retail. When that happens, a secondary market takes over to facilitate buying and selling sold out pieces from an edition.

The secondary market is not organized in any fashion. It is made up of a loose knit group of brokers, dealers and others with access to sold out prints and with ongoing marketing to reach potential buyers. The prices are purely a supply and demand function and most often involve signifcant increases from the original price of the prints. Doolittle's latest piece is already selling on eBay and elsewhere online at prices as much as three times the original price. Whether the sellers get such lofty price points is a different matter, but some are trying to capitalize while the buzz is high.

The blog goes on to discuss the marketing tactics used to sell giclee prints and limited editions and questions why visual artists are stuck with being forced to limit how  much of their work they can sell. Recording artists don't limit sales, neither do filmmakers or Broadway impresarios, for them it's the more the merrier. Meanwhile, Bev Doolittle and her publishers Greenwich Workshop are making a bundle on her latest print, but they can't make any more. They are done selling already. I contend if the edition were open, but numbered consecutively, it would sell well for years and the lower numbers would be more collectible than higher.

Read the blog post for more detailed thinking on this and when you do, you'll also find a couple of links to informative articles on the secondary market that are definitely worth reading and bookmarking.

Hello Barney and Naomi,

During the years I was on the road, I sold many magnificent, 100 - 140 color, limited edition serigraphs by a major fine art publisher.  This was prior to, and during, the early explosion of giclee reproductions.  The up-front cost to do a complete serigraph edition of several hundred large format prints had to be staggering, but they consistently selected images many of which sold out at the wholesale level.  They poured tons of dollars into promoting the art and their artists; a class operation from beginning to end, in my opinion.  As Barney suggested here and in his other perceptive blogs, "limiting" the size of an edition rather than numbering prints consecutively and allowing the actual demand to determine the size of the edition of the print is more manipulation than market value.

This company set a pre-publication price, usually in the mid hundreds of dollars, and then increased the price as the edition sold at wholesale, usually ending with a $3,000 - $4,000 "sold out" price.  Galleries that bought early at the low end, could, and often did, advance the prices to their clients and demonstrate the increase in value by showing the company's monthly price sheets, which reflected the increases they set in place.  Some editions never sold out, but many did.  They also had an enlightened policy that allowed their galleries to "trade-in" over-bought or slow moving images for the latest releases.  It was a "win - win" because the gallery could freshen their look as the publisher credited the gallery with the original "early in the release" price against a new purchase and re-sell the return to another buyer at the higher "sold out" price.

They also kept great records and there were a number of times a client of mine would want a "sold out" image and be willing to pay whatever was asked.  I could call the publisher who then would check their buyers to see if a gallery still had one in inventory, and I could negotiate with the gallery to buy for my client.

Artists, in general, are wonderful people, but because they are so focused on the creative process often won't take the trouble to learn the basic ins-and-outs of the business they hope will support them.  If I had a magic wand, I'd wave it and make a copy of your no-nonsense book appear magically in their hands.  Then the trick would be to make them read it.  Harry Potter, where are you when we need you!"

Dick Harrison