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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.

I just finished an edition of 25 screenprints that took me four months from the first drawing to the last pull. Copper plates, inks, paper, the studio time, the proofs I rejected along the way. Sold the whole edition to a gallery for €900, which sounds fine until you do the real math and realize the materials alone were close to half that, and the gallery takes 50% on top. So I made 25 objects by hand and I think I netted something like €6 an hour. The gallery is happy. The collector is happy. I'm the only one who knows the number. The part I keep turning over is that I priced it like a print. Like the edition makes it cheap, because it's a multiple, because the original is the plate and the prints are just copies of it. But each one of those copies took my hands on it. That logic is from an old world where printmaking was a reproduction tool, not a primary medium. I keep selling work on a pricing model that was built for something printmaking no longer is, and I don't know if I'm too scared to break it or just can't figure out what the new number should be. I raised the price on the next edition by €300 and I'm already scared nobody takes it.

Just finished pricing a risograph edition, 12 prints, two colors, and I landed on €45 each. The math is fine if you count paper, ink, the masters, the studio time. But I didn't count my time in it at all. I never do. I put "artist labor" in the spreadsheet as if it's a line item I can just leave blank and come back to later, and I never come back to it. It's a weird thing with editioned work specifically. With a single painting I can at least pretend the hours are the point. With a run of 12 copies the whole logic is that it's reproducible, and somehow that makes me feel like I'm not allowed to charge for the making of it. Like the edition is supposed to be cheap because it's a multiple, and that's the entire trap, because the original is dead expensive and the edition should be the accessible gateway, except then I've made something that costs me 12 hours and pays me zero per hour. A friend put it well once: you're not selling the object, you're selling the permission to own a thing that came out of your head. The paper is nearly free. I should try actually believing that before the next one.

A collector bought one of my prints at the studio open day, then emailed asking if I'd sign it "individually" because "an edition of 50 feels a bit mass produced." I had to explain that the edition IS the work. The number is not a compromise, it is the point. Fifty prints that are one image, one decision, repeated until they stop being copies and become something else. He wrote back, "Oh, so it's like a limited edition." Yes. That is exactly what it is. That was always the whole thing. I spent ten minutes afterward staring at my own screenprint like I had to defend it from its own buyer. Maybe I should start answering the question with "would you say that to a writer about their print run?" I don't know why the edition makes people so uncomfortable. As if the multiple is somehow less honest than a unique object. As if there is a true original hiding somewhere and the rest of us are just photocopying. Anyway. He bought it. I think he still believes he got a discount version of a real artwork. Let him.

I was taught to pull an edition to a rhythm, one per breath, the way my old master did in Milan. But the breath thing never worked for me, I sped up, I got sloppy. So somewhere along the way I started pulling each print to my own heartbeat instead. Not counting, just feeling it in my chest and timing the pull to it. It has genuinely ruined me for standard editioning. I cannot work with assistants anymore because their hearts are not my heart and my prints come out uneven. Which is probably the whole point, if I think about it too long, which I do. The edition is supposed to be identical copies but mine are secretly all in my pulse. A hundred prints and each one marks a different second of the day I was alive. Today I pulled twenty-two before my coffee went cold and I had to stop and think about what I'm actually doing with my life. Not the work. The method. Are any of us doing anything else.

Finished an edition of twelve etchings this week and every single one is a clean pull. Registration on point, ink consistent, not one bitten edge. I should be pleased. Instead I'm staring at the stack feeling like I made a photocopy of a painting I never actually made. I know printmakers are supposed to chase the perfect run. But the ones I actually care about in my own collection are the failed proofs, the ones where the plate was over-inked or the paper shifted a hair. You can see the hand in those. The edition of twelve is just a document. I'm wondering now if the whole edition is the wrong unit for me. Maybe I want to keep the plates alive, keep pulling until something breaks, and let the differences be the point. Repetition as the subject, not the obstacle. That's the theory anyway. The practice is that I have twelve identical prints and they're boring me. Anyone else hit this wall where doing it right kills it?

I pulled an edition of screenprints this week, four colors, nothing complicated, and about halfway through I noticed the same faint ghost of the first layer showing up in the same spot on every single sheet. Not a misprint exactly. The registration is off by the same couple of millimeters each time, like the frame settled into a habit. Part of me wanted to scrap the lot and start over. But I kept looking at it and honestly the ghost is doing something for the piece. It reads like the image has a memory of itself. Which is funny because that's basically the whole question I keep circling in my own work, the copy and the trace and what the authentic original even is. And here it is, accidental, in forty identical sheets. I haven't decided yet. I printed a small edition last year where I burned the screens after pulling thirty and I still think about that. There's something about letting the imperfection be the edition that feels both like a cop-out and the most honest thing. Anyway. The work is leaning on it. Or I'm rationalising it. Hard to tell from inside.

I spent two days this week trying to keep an edition consistent and I hate every single print. The registration is perfect, the ink density is the same, the paper behaved. And they're dead. Completely dead on the page. I think I've been doing this long enough that I should know better. But there's something about the discipline of the edition, the obsessive checking, that kills the life out of the work. The prints that always end up in the shows are the ones I pull a little too fast, when the squeegee angle drifts, when I stop thinking and just move. I lined the dead ones up on the floor this morning. Thirty-two perfect, identical, worthless little objects. It should be the opposite. The multiple is supposed to be about the copy being alive in its own way, not a Xerox of itself. I keep telling people that. Maybe I should start believing it and pull the screens a little sloppier again.

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.

Someone at the group show in Berlin bought the whole first edition of that screenprint I keep saying I'm done with. All thirty. Not one, the lot. The curator asked if I'd consider printing more and I said no, which felt like turning down a favour but I meant it. The whole point of the piece is that it's finite, that the edition closes and the image becomes something only a few people get to hold. If I reprint it, the thing collapses into exactly what it's about. It's a small sale, really, the money barely covers the month. But the idea held. That's the part I keep turning over. I spent years making multiples and feeling like that made the work lesser, not serious. And now the scarcity is the work. Shouldn't have taken me this long to see my own medium. Anyway. Thirty prints out in the world with my signature and a number. Feels like releasing birds, honestly.

Found out last week that the gallery I show with in Berlin takes 50% on editions. Not prints sold through them, editions. I knew the percentage when I signed, I just never did the math on what it meant for the small riso multiples that sell for €80. So the collector pays €80, I get €40, and after paper, ink, the screen, the riso drum wear if I bother to count it, packing, and the trip to drop them off, I'm maybe at €25 a piece. Four hours of editioning to sell four of them and I've made what I'd get for one hour of teaching. The stupid part is I keep pricing as if the gallery cut doesn't exist. I know I should raise the retail price but I'm scared the small multiples stop selling because they're my only "affordable" entry point. So instead I just quietly resent it every time I drop off a batch. I think I need to actually sit down and decide: do I raise the editions to €100 and lose some buyers, or do I stop pretending the gallery is worth it for the small stuff and keep selling those direct? The gallery does bring me the serious collectors, the ones who buy the big etchings. But I can't keep eating the cost on the entry-level work just to feel like I have a foot in the door. Has anyone else had the moment where they did the real math on a gallery split and realized the "foot in the door" was basically them paying for the privilege?

Spent the morning editioning a screenprint, edition of 40, and I kept a tally of every proof I pulled before settling on the good ones. Fourteen proofs. Fourteen almost-finished prints sitting in a drawer that no one will ever see, and I caught myself thinking about how thrilled I'd be to find a stack of rejected proofs by someone I admire. But mine are just... failures. I signed the edition, and then I couldn't stop running the numbers on how many hours of my life are in those discarded sheets. There's something odd about a medium where the whole point is the multiple, and then we turn around and create this hierarchy of the sacred copy. The artist's proof, the edition, the sketch, the one that got away. I've been reading about how Duchamp and all of them were obsessed with the readymade and reproduction, but the print world still behaves like a monastery deciding which relics are authentic. I don't know. Maybe I should have titled the drawer. Maybe the rejected proofs are the more honest work and I'm just not brave enough to show them. Does anyone else keep their near-misses, or do you destroy them?

There's a proper black magic to the first pull of an edition. You've sharpened the gouges, you've proofed it till you're sick of the sight of it, and then you ink the bastard and you hold your breath because forty sheets is a long way and the lino's only going to get softer and mushier and more treacherous the whole way down. Anyway. Forty prints off the whale mooring block today, every last one clean. Not a dry spot, not a slip, not a bit of the fine line work packing up. The last one came off as good as the first and I near laughed out loud in the empty studio. The dog looked at me like I'd lost the run of myself entirely. There's a lot of the job you can't control, sure. Paper that decides to cockle on you, ink that goes off, a Tuesday. But that one hour, that run of forty, that was mine. Nobody else's. Felt like the whole craft thing was worth a damn today.

Twenty-four prints in an edition and not one of them with a bald spot or a jagged edge. I've done this long enough to know that's not luck, that's the block finally behaving itself after I stopped fighting it. Carved that heron for the third time, third go at the same bird, and this is the one where I just let the lino tell me where it wanted to give. Sounds feckin' mystical writing it out but that's genuinely what it is. First forty prints all had this one spot on the wing where the ink was shy. Re-carved it once, twice, then I just left it and the thing started printing like a dream. Signed and numbered the whole run this morning with the kids at the table, little fella trying to press his palm into the corner of every one. Had to tell him no about forty times and he still got one. So there's a print out there with a tiny handprint in the margin that I'll sell to nobody and keep for himself. Grand. Anyway. Twenty-four clean pulls, my back is wrecked, and I'm dead proud of the lot of them. The bird finally earned his keep.

Ran the edition of the heron prints down to the last one today and the fella who bought it was the first person all day who didn't try to haggle. Just handed over the cash and said "that's for my mother, she loves the birds." Fair play to him. Nice way to finish the stall, walking home with an empty tube and a bit of a bounce in the step. Some days you sell one, some days you sell nothing and you'd swear the dog was looking at you sideways for it, but today the whole run's gone and that's a good feeling all round. The mother in question better like the print now, that's all I'm saying. 🌟

Early on, a gallery told me my work would sell better if I made editions, numbered prints, multiples, something they could move more of. I understood the logic, but cyanotypes are so much about the single moment, the sun that day, that particular seawater, the way the paper dries. I couldn't make myself do it. I said no and walked away, and it took me a while to feel sure about that decision. What's the thing a gallery asked you to change about your work that you wouldn't, or maybe should have, and how did you know?

A museum shop in Vienna picked up a small edition of my screenprints for their retail. I was thrilled, museum shop, right, that feels like validation. They paid €150 per print, wholesale. I sold them 20. I did the math yesterday because I was avoiding something else. Each print takes me about four hours from exposure to final trim, not counting the drawing time before that, not counting the screens I burned and then rejected, not counting the test proofs. So €150 for roughly six hours of work per print if I'm being generous about what counts as labour. That's €25 an hour if nothing goes wrong. Something always goes wrong. I'm not saying the museum shop ripped me off. That's just the going rate, they were fine to deal with. But I sat there thinking: I have an MFA, I've been doing this fifteen years, and I'm making €25 an hour selling to an institution that will mark it up to €400 and call it affordable art. And I said yes because I was flattered they asked. I don't know what the right number is. I just know that the gap between what feels good for the ego and what's actually sustainable keeps getting wider and I keep choosing the ego.

I did a screenprint edition last month, 50 copies, three colours, hand-pulled, on nice 300gsm. Cost me about €450 in materials plus probably 30 hours in the studio. Sold 7 so far at €40 each. That's €280. Even if I sell every last one I'm barely breaking even on materials, let alone labour. And I know the advice. Raise the price. Build a mailing list before you print. Test the market with a preorder. All sensible. But there's something about making the edition first, committing to it, that's the whole point for me. The risk is part of the form. If I only printed what I'd already sold, it'd feel like a different practice entirely. I'm not complaining exactly. More trying to figure out where the line is between doing something for the work's sake and just being bad at the business side. Because I think I'm genuinely bad at the business side. But I also think the people who are good at it sometimes make work that's too safe. Any other printmakers here just accepting they'll lose money on editions because the object matters more than the margin? Or am I deluding myself.

I spent six hours yesterday printing the same screen 85 times and somewhere around batch four I started having full conversations with myself out loud. The kind where you catch yourself and think, who am I talking to. Everyone warns you about the technical disasters. Misregistration, bad pull, ink drying on the mesh. Nobody warns you that the real challenge is just staying in the room with yourself and the repetition. It's almost monastic. Or maybe just lonely. I keep a notebook now and just write down whatever stupid thought passes through, yesterday it was "what if I printed this on denim" and "I think I've had three different versions of this thought in three different cities." Anyway. 85 prints, one registration error. I'll take it. But my god the silence gets loud.

A gallery in Leipzig asked me for a small edition of risograph prints for their holiday market, 50 copies, two colors, A3. I said €250 because I thought riso was cheap to produce and I'd breeze through it. I forgot to account for the test prints, the misregistration on the first 15, the fact that I had to reorder one of the inks mid-run, and the two full days I spent separating the layers because the files the gallery sent were trash. Total cost of materials plus my time: somewhere around €17 an hour. For printmaking. That's less than I paid for the paper. I keep doing this thing where I price the work as if the thinking part is free. As if the years of knowing how to troubleshoot a bad registration or choose paper that won't ghost count for nothing. I just factor materials and a small gesture toward labour and call it done. I'm raising the next edition to €600 and I already feel like I'm being greedy. Which is insane, because €600 for 50 prints, two-color, A3, with original art, that's €12 a print. That's nothing. But the feeling is there anyway.