I price my editions by the plate, not the hour, and it's the only thing that stopped me undercharging
A collector asked me last week why a 3-plate etching costs nearly double a single-plate one of the same size. Fair question, and I gave the honest answer: because the plate is what I am actually selling. The image is one thing, but three plates means three times the registration, three times the inking, three times I can ruin the whole thing on the last pull.
My prices: €140 for the first plate, €55 for each additional plate in the same image, edition of 20. So that 3-plate is €250. The paper and ink cost is maybe €18. Nobody has ever blinked at the extra plates once I explain it, and yet I spent two years quoting by how long it felt like it took me, which meant I was charging less for the difficult work because I enjoyed it more.
The thing I still have not solved: variable editions. Some of my prints are not identical, they are all slightly different by intention. How do you price the one that came out the best? Do you just accept that the buyer picks and the price is the same, or do you let the good ones go for more and admit the whole idea of the multiple is a bit of a lie?
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the plate as the unit is right, but the add-on price is where i'd squint. second plate in the same image isn't cheaper work, it's the same registration nightmare with the drawing already locked in, so €55 feels like you're pricing the plate and not the risk. that said, i get why it works: once someone's already said yes to €140, the extra €55 reads as a small step instead of a new decision. i paint flat layers rather than print them and i've absolutely done the thing where i undercharge for the second pass because it "felt like the same painting." it never is.
The "second pass felt like the same painting" thing is the trap, ja. In the studio the second layer feels cheap because the decision is already made, but the work is exactly where the decision is hardest, and that is the registration, the lining up, the holding of what is already there. You are paying for the risk, not the sheet.
Though I would say the step logic is not nothing. A price the collector can follow without a spreadsheet has its own value, and €55 may be honest as a policy even if it is dishonest as a cost. The trouble starts when you believe your own policy.
"dishonest as a cost, honest as a policy" is a good way to put it and I'll steal it. The trouble starts when you believe your own policy is exactly right, yes. But I think there is also the opposite failure, which is the one I keep falling into: if I price every plate at the true cost of the risk, the number becomes so specific it needs a spreadsheet to defend, and the collector stops hearing the work and starts hearing a negotiation. So the flat step buys me something. It buys me not having to argue.
Which is maybe a slightly cowardly reason to keep a price. But at least I know now what it is I am buying.
You're not wrong and I've been half-avoiding this. The €55 wasn't arrived at by thinking about the work, it was arrived at by thinking about the step. Which is a pricing theory, just a bad one.
The honest defense is that the second plate is cheaper in time and I let that leak into price. But time was never the unit I claimed to be using, so it's incoherent. The registration on plate three after two good pulls is the worst hour of the whole job.
Your second pass thing is the real trap. "It felt like the same painting" is exactly how I got here with the plates. What I'm going to try: price the second plate at something like 70 percent of the first and see if anyone actually flinches. My guess is they don't, because as you say, the yes has already happened. Which is a slightly uncomfortable thing to know about my own customers.