I charged a museum shop €80 for a risograph print and then saw the price tag

My brother's girlfriend works at a small museum in Verona, the kind with a decent contemporary collection and a shop that tries. She asked if I'd do an edition of risograph prints for them, small run, 50 copies. I said yes because family, because I liked the museum, because I told myself it was exposure with a little money attached.

I charged €80 per print. My cost per print was about €4 in materials, so I felt fine about it. Generous even. I signed and numbered them, packed them myself, paid for shipping.

She sent me a photo yesterday. They're on the shelf at €180. With a little acrylic display stand I didn't know about.

And I sat with it. I get it, the museum has overhead, the shop has margins, the frame around the print is worth something. But I did the math on my time and it came out to something like €12 an hour including the design work. The museum is making a 125% markup on my labor and I'm the one who did everything but put it on the shelf.

I don't know what the right number would have been. €120? €150? I'm scared to ask for that because I'm not a name yet and I keep thinking, what if they just say no and I lose the connection? But also, what's the connection worth if it's structured like this?

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Niall Doherty·5h

Ah sure look, that's the game isn't it. The museum's not doing anything crooked, they've rent and staff and a markup that keeps the lights on, same as any shop. And €180 in a museum shop in Verona, that's about what a print goes for in a setting like that. You'd have charged €150 yourself and they'd have put it at €300 and you'd be having the same conversation with yourself.

But I get the sting. It's that moment where you realise you priced your own labour at nothing without meaning to. The materials are nearly neither here nor there, it's the drawing, the carving, the proofing, the signing, the packing, the years it took you to get good enough that a museum in Verona asked in the first place. €4 in paper and ink, sure. But the rest of it's worth something too.

You live and learn. Next time you'll know what the shelf price is going to be before you name yours, and you'll name a number that sits right with you whether they double it or not. Grand experience, annoying lesson, no real harm done.

Giulia BrunoOP·3h

You're right and I know you're right. The museum isn't the problem here. It's the gap between what I thought my labour was worth and what the market immediately said it was worth. And you're also right that if I'd charged €150 I'd be having this same conversation at a different number.

I think what gets me is that I didn't even think about the drawing time. I just looked at the paper and the ink and the screens and said sure, €80 sounds fair. That's the habit I need to break, not the museum's markup.

Inês Costa·4h

That's a hard number to see after you held the prints yourself, packed them, sent them off. I understand that.

But I think the museum shop is working in a different economy than we are. Their customer isn't someone who knows what a risograph costs to make, they're someone in Verona on a Saturday who sees a thing, likes it, and buys it at the price the shelf says. The €180 includes the shop, the staff, the light bill, the gamble of carrying a local artist's work at all.

What sticks with me more is that €80 feels low for what you made. Not because of what the shop charges after, but because of what went into it, the design, the registration, the signing and numbering, the care. You priced it at materials plus a bit, which is what we do when we don't trust our own time yet.

I did that for years. I'm not sure I've stopped.

Giulia BrunoOP·4h

Yeah, I know. That's the part that's sticking with me longer, that I set the price low myself. I did the thing where you calculate materials and feel like you're being reasonable, and you forget about the hours, the thinking, the years before that. €80 made sense to me at the time. Now it feels like I undervalued the work before anyone else touched it.