I quoted 45 euro for the riso zine and then printed 300 copies of it
The zine is 24 pages, two colours, riso, edition of 150. I said 45 euro to the curator because it felt like a nice round number and I wanted the show to happen. Then I did the maths on the actual printing: masters, the paper, the fact that I reprinted nine pages because the registration drifted, the hours folding and stapling. Somewhere between 7 and 8 euro an hour.
Here is what I keep circling back to. In printmaking the price of the object and the price of the work have almost nothing to do with each other, and I don't know which one I'm supposed to be charging for. 45 euro is roughly what a print costs. It is nowhere near what a print costs. The edition is the whole point, the multiple, the fact that the same image exists 150 times, and the market reads that as "so it should be cheap." I made the thing more available and it made me worth less. There's a logic there and I hate it.
I'm not asking what to charge. I know I underpriced it, that's not the interesting part. I'm asking whether anyone has actually solved this for multiples, or whether we all just quietly subsidise the idea.
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Ah jaysus, the nine pages reprinted because the registration drifted. That's the bit that always gets left out of the quote, isn't it. Nobody budgeting for a show ever factors in the afternoon you spend chasing a colour that's decided it wants to live two millimetres to the left.
I know the 45 euro feeling well. Quoted a fella 60 for a lino edition once because he looked like he'd faint at 80, and I told myself it was fine because the exhibition would be good for me. Spent the guts of two weeks on it. Did the same sum as you, came out somewhere south of minimum wage, and had a lovely framed thank-you card to show for it.
Here's the only thing I've landed on after years of this, and I'm not sure it's right either. You can't charge for the hours, because the hours are the bit nobody can see and nobody wants to pay for. What you're actually selling is the object and the fact that it exists at all, and the price has to cover the printing and then some, or you're subsidising a curator's budget out of your own evenings. So I quote the job, not the hour. Which feels dishonest right up until you remember that's what every trade does.
But the 45 euro on the first one is a different animal to the 45 euro on the 40th. You were buying the show with that number. Just be honest with yourself about whether you're buying a show or paying your rent that week, because doing both at once is how you end up bitter at a launch with a warm white wine in your hand.
The registration is the job, not a delay in the job. Curators never see it that way because they never stand at the rack. Same as putting a price on stone: the client pays for the finished block, not for the two days you spent cutting a plinth that didn't sit right.
The 45 is a price for the object. Fine. But then don't call the hours a loss, call them what they were, a favour you chose to do. And next time quote the edition, not the piece. Two weeks has a number whether he likes it or not.
"Don't call the hours a loss, call them a favour you chose to do." That is the sentence I will be chewing on all week, because it's true and I don't like it. I did choose it. I wanted the show and I priced accordingly and then got quietly resentful about a decision I made myself, which is the least dignified possible position.
The thing about quoting the edition though: half the reason I said 45 was that I couldn't defend a number. I have no vocabulary for it in front of a curator. Ask me to talk about what the multiple does to the idea of an original and I'll go for an hour. Ask me what my time costs and I go blank and say forty-five. That's not a pricing problem, that's me.
Also the plinth. The plinth that didn't sit right is a whole other post and I'm not ready for it.
The registration drift is the whole argument of the piece and I refuse to admit it. Two millimetres to the left and suddenly I'm standing over the drying rack at eleven at night telling myself this ghosting is intentional, that the misalignment is the content, that I am working with chance like Cage did. It's a lie. But it's a lie I need in order to keep going.
The lino one hurts more because lino at least should behave. Riso you half expect to be possessed.
Here's the part I can't resolve. We both did the sum, both came out under minimum wage, and both of us are going to do it again next time, probably at the same price because the same kind of person will ask. So the question isn't really how do I price this. It's whether I'm charging for the object or for the chance to make the next one. I think I've been charging for access to myself and calling it a day rate.
Nice framed thing though. Where is it hanging now, or did it go to the fella who nearly fainted.