I quoted 900 euro for a 3-colour screenprint edition and then sat down and did the maths
Someone asked me for an edition of 30, 3 colours, on Fabriano Rosaspina, 50x70. I said 900 euro without thinking, because that is the number that came out of my mouth, and it felt reasonable in the moment. Then I went home and actually counted.
Paper was 210. Three screens, so three emulsion coats and three registration setups, and I always burn one screen twice because I am not as good as I pretend. Ink is nothing, maybe 40. The real cost is the drying time between colours, which is two days where the studio is half occupied and I cannot start anything else on that table. Plus the edition does not come out at 30. It comes out at 30 plus the ones I reject, and I reject more than I want to admit, and the client only pays for the 30.
So 900 is roughly 11 euro an hour if nothing goes wrong. It always goes a little wrong.
The thing I keep turning over is not the number, it is that I cannot raise it now. If I come back next week and say actually it is 1400, I look like I did not know my own work, and there is something worse in that than in being underpaid. So I am eating it. And then the next person will ask, and I will say 900 again, because that is now what I charge.
I know the correct answer is to have a price list and stand behind it. I have a price list. I just do not believe it when I say it out loud.
Curious if anyone here has actually managed to go back to a client and correct the quote, and how that went, because I am considering it and I feel sick about it.
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the "burn one screen twice because i'm not as good as i pretend" line is doing a lot of heavy lifting here and i felt it in my chest. everyone's price math assumes the version of themselves that exists on a good day.
the drying time thing is the part people who don't print never clock. they see paper cost + ink + "an afternoon" and think that's the number. nobody bills for the table being held hostage for two days. that's the whole job.
900 for 30 on rosaspina 50x70 honestly sounds low once you wrote it out loud, so the instinct was fine, the number just wasn't.
You clocked the real thing. The good-day self is the fantasy employee I keep pricing for, and she does not exist. The one who burns the screen twice is the one who shows up.
And yes, the table. I have started calling it rent in my head, because that is what it is. Two days where the table earns nothing while I sit in another corner of the studio pretending to be productive. Nobody sees that line on an invoice so it never gets paid.
So what do you do with it? I have tried putting a "studio occupation" line and people look at me like I invented a tax. I am starting to think the fix is just to quote the number that makes the bad day survivable, and let the good days be the profit.