decoding the print market

Before going to bed last night, after spending one of those obsessive thought-and-research days, I made a quick post in an effort to get a grip on the whole self-directed print-market thing. Being way-new at this idea I was looking for answers to questions I hadn't even considered yet -- and hoping for some insight. Well, Silver responded is spades (and thanks a lot, guys, for saying the comments were better than the post -- yeesh :), plus the follow-up comments were really helpful. This is my response.

First, the pragmatics: I have been testing colour laser printers (not mine -- like I could afford one!) at commercial printers with a variety of weights/surfaces/qualities of archival paper. If I'm going to sell prints, I want them to be the best quality I can afford. But I have noticed that many of the papers offered, like the Strathmore line, are made specifically for inkjet printers. What does that mean if you have laser prints made? (And thanks for pointing out my omission -- I changed the wording at Etsy to specify laser print.)

Two things have sparked my recent interest in prints: observation of the runaway success of Ashleyg (I'm mentioned you again, Ashley, because you are my home-based-art-business role model) and the recent approach by an open-edition print company to carry my work. I have tried the limited-edition print model with a sophomore company and though their ethics and marketing are really solid, the company's sales have not yet come near to expectations. Maybe it's due to them being a late entrant into an already-saturated market. As for open-edition prints, I'm trying to kick that art school ethical hangover about it being a sell-out. Come to think of it, one could argue that limited edition prints are almost as much a sell-out, being only slightly less damaging to the 'pure' artist's ability to sell originals.

Am I throwing in the towel here in an effort to survive financially? People who should know better tell me all the time that they'd buy original art "if only they could afford it." Then they buy prints that are really just posters with a signature, but not until after they've bought that must-have pair of shoes. Those Robert Bateman signed lithos, no matter how beautifully presented, really can't hold a candle to the luminosity and beauty of an original piece half its size by a talented unknown. And the sad thing is that they command a higher price. Granted, Bateman is the top rung of the offset lithographic print market, and part of what you're paying for is his fame, but if I could buy one painting for the same as I'd pay for three limited-edition prints, there is no question what I'd do. I started my run of small art paintings last April in an effort to make original art affordable, but when I post them on Etsy, for example, they don't move, because they're not under $40. For an artist to break even, anything under $40 on Etsy must either be a print or something that doesn't take the four+ hours (and years of art training and experience) it takes me to produce an 8" x 8" x 1.5" painting.


This wasn't supposed to turn into a diatribe about ethics in art marketing, but when you spend more time trying to figure out how to make a go of it in a rapidly-evolving marketplace than you do actually producing work, something has to give. Talent and work ethic simply aren't enough, the bricks-and-mortar galleries are suffering, and on-line shopping continues to increase, so new approaches are necessary. Maybe I need to abandon old ideas about what constitutes art while I'm abandoning old ideas about how to sell it.

Though influential artists who write about art, like Robert Genn, think that artists should be able to survive economically on their own steam, I admire those who can run with a vision with little regard for what sells and what doesn't. They are the true innovators whose work occupies the rarefied avant-garde gallery niche, and they need to make economic sacrifices so they don't have to make creative aesthetic ones. Most survive on part-time day jobs and government grant programmes because sales are few and far between. If I'd been smart enough to become a painter right out of the blocks and not spent years struggling with my economically-conservative and socially-conventional upbringing, I might have done it that way, too. At least I'd have liked to have given myself the option. Maybe in my next life.

NOTE Val, in the comments, just pointed out a semantic problem: the word print. Technically speaking, prints are hand-pulled originals (screen prints, etchings, woodcuts, etc.) and the process is called printmaking. I'm discussing offset lithographic, giclee or digital prints, which are really just different ways of mass-producing posters, whether they use archival materials or not. The grey area is when these posters are numbered and signed. Most laypersons have no idea that these 'limited edition prints' are just excellent-quality posters in a limited run.

Do read the comments -- they're great.