The edition math nobody talks about: €220 for a 30-edition etching

I finally did the real math on my last edition and it's worse than I thought. Thirty prints, edition of 30, sold at €220 each. Sounds fine until you count what's actually in it.

The plate took me six weeks of drawing and biting. That time doesn't multiply across the edition, it just sits there as a lump. Then each sheet: paper, ink, the hours in the studio, the failed proofs that go in the bin before a single good one exists. Two plates cracked before I got one to bite right.

So €6,600 gross on the edition. Take out paper and ink and studio rent and the proofs that failed and the plate time at anything near minimum wage and I'm looking at maybe €9 an hour if I'm being generous with myself. And that's the number I'm supposed to feel lucky about because editioned work is "approachable" for collectors.

What I can't figure out is where the line is. Raise the price and a print is no longer the entry point, it's a real purchase, and people hesitate. Keep it where it is and I'm basically paying to have my work out in the world. I know plenty of printmakers who've just stopped doing editions altogether because the answer never made sense. I'm not there yet but I'm watching the math get worse every time I add up a new one.

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Roman Petrak·2h

People always do that math on the sold-out number and never the real one. The six weeks on the plate is the part nobody counts because it doesn't show up on any one print. But it's the biggest line on the sheet.

I'd add that the math gets worse the longer you work. Early on your plates bite on the first or second try because you don't push them. Twenty years in, you know exactly how far you can take one, so you push it until it fails. The failed proofs are a skill tax, not a waste.

Only thing I'd push back on is edition size. At 30 you're pricing scarcity into it. If the demand's there, an edition of 50 at €150 gets you more gross with the same plate. But that only works if the market wants 50. If it wants 30, you're stuck with the honest number.

Either way, €220 is what it costs to make, not what it's worth. The margin's the thing that keeps you doing it at all.

Giulia BrunoOP·1h

The skill tax thing is exactly right and I wish I'd said it that way. When I was starting out I'd get a plate right in three days and think I was fast. Now I spend two weeks pulling a plate back from a place I know is risky because I want to see if it breaks. That's not inefficiency, that's the work. And you can't charge for the attempts that don't survive, so it just gets eaten.

On the edition size, I hear you, but I pushed back on myself the other way. I could do a bigger run and drop the price, but part of what I'm selling is that there's a limited window on a plate before it starts to wear. Edition of 30 is a promise about the object, not a scarcity game. Though honestly, if I'm being real with myself, the scarcity framing is also easier than admitting the real number should just be higher.

Margaret Hsu·2h

I've had this same conversation with printmakers more than once, and the plate time is exactly the line that never gets counted because it's so hard to amortize. Six weeks of drawing and biting is not a cost that shrinks when you sell out. It is what it is, sitting there before the first sheet ever goes through.

The part I'd add is the failed proofs. People outside the craft see an edition of thirty and assume it's thirty good ones. They don't see the two cracked plates or the bin full of sheets that were never going to be signed. That's real paper, real ink, real hours, and it's invisible in the final number.

At some point you have to decide whether €220 is a fair price for the object or a fair price for the work, and those are very different sums. I suspect most of us end up somewhere in between and quietly resent it.

Giulia BrunoOP·1h

The failed proofs are the part that always surprises people when I actually show them. There's a drawer in my studio that's mostly paper I'll never use, and it's not small. I counted once and it was nearly a ream. Nobody prices that in because you can't really put a per-print number on it, but it's the difference between the edition paying for itself and the edition paying for the studio.

And the cracked plates. Two in this one. People think a plate is a stable object, it's not. It's copper with a temper, it fights you. I had one bite through in a spot I'd spent three days on and I just sat there looking at it. The whole drawing gone in a bubble.

The worst part is you can't put that in the price either. If a collector asks why it's €220 they want to hear about paper quality and archival ink, not my bad weeks.

Giulia BrunoOP·1h

The plate time thing is exactly it, and I think it's worse for printmakers because we've internalized the reproduction logic. A painter sells one painting, the hours are on the surface of the thing. We sell thirty prints but the six weeks is still one lump, and the collector doesn't see it because they're not buying the plate, they're buying the sheet on the wall. So the real cost per print is never what the price says it is.

I keep a running tally now of every failed state before a good proof exists. Not to punish myself, but because the next time I price an edition I want the number to be honest. The cracked plates too, that's a cost people genuinely do not know about. Most people think etching is just drawing on a plate and dunking it in acid. They don't know the plate is a temperamental thing that can decide halfway through the edition that it's done with you.

The part I struggle with is what to do with the math once you have it. Do you raise the price and make the edition smaller, or do you just accept that printmaking is a slow way to be poor and keep going because you can't picture doing anything else?