A woman in Lisbon asked to license two prints for a hotel bathroom and the fee was less than my paper

A woman from a hotel group in Lisbon emailed last week about two of the blue prints. Not for a gallery wall. For a bathroom, one of those big ones with the freestanding tub and the single olive branch.

The fee they offered: 180 euros for both, printed, for three years.

I buy my paper from a small place in Barcelona. A single sheet of the heavy cotton is almost 9 euros now, and I ruin about one in four between coating and washing. That is before the sea, the hours, the fix. I said no, politely, and she wrote back that their budget was fixed and it was "a lovely exposure for the work."

The exposure line. I keep thinking about how many people have said it to me and how little it has ever done. Once, years ago, I let a magazine use a print for free and I did get two sales from it, so I cannot say it never works. But 180 for two, printed, was not a negotiation, it was a rounding error for them.

I am not asking how to price things. I know my number. I am just tired of the moment in the email where the other person decides my materials do not count.

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Margaret Hsu·3h

The paper math is what gets me. Nine euros a sheet, a quarter of them lost between coating and washing, and that is before you have put anything on the page. So 180 euros for two finished prints, three years, commercial use, is not a low fee. It is a subsidy. You would be paying the hotel for the privilege of hanging in their bathroom.

I have had this conversation. The "exposure" line only ever arrives when the number is already insulting, and it is usually offered by someone who has never bought a sheet of cotton rag in their life. A fixed budget is a fact, not an argument. You can decline a fixed budget.

The one thing I would say in her partial defence, having sat on both sides of this: hotel groups genuinely do have procurement bands, and the person emailing you often has no authority to move them. That does not oblige you to accept it. It just means the no does not need to be an argument. Something along the lines of "my licensing fee for commercial use of two works for three years is X, and I am not able to go below it" is enough. No justification, no apology, no counter-offer you did not want to make.

Two prints in a hotel bathroom will be seen by a great many people and bought by none of them. Exposure is not a currency you can spend at the paper merchant in Barcelona.

Dani Okafor·2h

"A fixed budget is a fact, not an argument" is going straight in my notes.

The thing that gets me is that they always ask for the most commercial use at the least money. A hotel bathroom print runs for three years, gets seen by hundreds of people, and quietly sells the room. That's not decoration, that's a marketing asset, and they know the price of every other asset on that budget. I paint gouache and watercolor and I lose sheets to a bad wash like anyone, so the paper math is real, but honestly even without the paper it's the framing that bugs me. They never say "we have 180, what could you make for that." They just decide your work is the line item that flexes.

Anyway. Nice to see someone else say it plainly. Does she ever come back with a real number or is it radio silence from here?

Inês CostaOP·1h

The framing, yes. That is the part I could not say to her without sounding bitter, so I said no and left it. "We have 180, what could you do for that" would have been a real conversation. Instead it arrived as a finished sentence, take it or leave it, and the lovely exposure was there in case I took it.

You paint, so you know the wash. There is always one sheet that goes before you learn what the day is going to be. Nobody budgets for that sheet.

And the bathroom one will be looked at every morning for three years by someone who paid 300 a night for the room. She knows what the soap costs. The print she does not.

Inês CostaOP·2h

"A subsidy" is the word I should have used with her. It is exactly that, and it is strange how the ones asking never see it that way. They see a small number, not a cost.

The part I keep turning over is the bathroom itself. A print in a room with steam and no window, three years, no one looking at it. And still I nearly said yes, out of some old habit of being grateful to be asked at all. That habit costs us more than the paper does.

Roman Petrak·3h

The exposure line is the tell. Nobody offering real money says it. 180 for two prints, three years, commercial use, that's not a fee, that's asking you to donate and calling it a license.

I do stone and steel, so the numbers are different, but the math is the same. People see the finished object and think the price is for the object. It's for the four that cracked, the hours, and the twenty years it took to not crack them. You already know this. A hotel with a freestanding tub has a budget line for the towels in that room that's bigger than what they offered you.

Saying no politely was right. What I'd tell her next time is a flat number and no explanation. Explaining the paper cost invites negotiation on the paper cost.

Inês CostaOP·2h

"It's for the four that cracked", that is the whole thing, you said it better than I did. And I think people who work in materials understand it faster. Stone and steel, cyanotype, it teaches you the same lesson, that the object is the smallest part of what you are actually being asked to hand over.

The towels line made me laugh, in a tired way. The olive branch in that bathroom probably cost more than both my prints.

I said no and I do not regret it. But there is a small tiredness after, no? Explaining the arithmetic of a life to someone who has already decided it is a hobby.