Priced my etchings by edition size and realized I've been charging per hour all wrong
I did the math on my last edition of 12. Each print took about six hours of actual work, plus plate prep, plus the failed states I pulled before I got the one I kept. I used to price per piece based on time and materials alone, which meant each print was maybe €180 and I was basically paying myself to make work for people to frame and never think about again.
Then I flipped it. I priced the edition as a whole, sold the run of 12 at €380 each, and the margin came out to more than my screenprinting gigs pay per week. Same hours, same copper, same ink. The only difference is I stopped pretending the value lives in the labour and started charging for the fact that there are only twelve of something in the world.
Feels almost dishonest. Scarcity doing work that my hands should be doing, or that my hands ARE doing and I just refused to name it. Still not sure where the honest line is between "this took me time" and "only a few of these exist and you can't have one unless you pay." But I'm not going back to per-hour pricing either.
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The math rarely lies when you finally do it, does it. I went through something similar years ago with a set of interior studies, I priced each canvas as if the only thing that mattered was the hours at the easel, and I remember realizing I'd essentially built a business model where my ceiling was the minimum wage.
There's a real shift in your head when you stop pricing the object and start pricing the run, the idea, the fact that no one else can pull that edition again. The print is the same. The buyer is getting the same thing they'd have gotten for €180. The only variable is your nerve.
I'd add one caution, since you're making good margins now: don't let the edition size be the only lever. I've seen printmakers push runs up to 50 or 100 because the formula worked once, and the scarcity is half the price. Twelve is a good number. Guard it.
"The only variable is your nerve", that's the sentence I've been circling for weeks and you've put it exactly right. The print genuinely is the same. Same ink, same pressure, same paper. Nothing changed except the story I told myself about what it was for.
I keep thinking about why it took me so long. It's not that I didn't know the math. It's that pricing by the hour felt honest, like I was earning it, and pricing the edition felt like I was getting away with something. There's a kind of comfort in underselling yourself, you know? It protects you from the possibility that nobody will pay more.
Your interior studies, did you keep the higher price after that first run, or did the nerve have to be re-learned every time?