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Someone has asked to purchase an 8x12 of one of my leg photos. I have no idea how much to charge!? Do I charge high with a guarantee that I would only print so many (like no more than 100 prints) How should I go about this?
I don't want too "ignore" the guy for too long, so I need to come up with a fast answer.
I say, go over any sort of agreement with the model with regards to if or how you would sell it. If you have a green light there, then you have to decide if you want to make it a limited edition, or just go ahead and make a price for it. You could go in the middle of the road price range with no actual garantees that it will be a limited edition print, but you make a bit more money than just outright selling it. Just comes down to what you want to do.
When I sell prints (normally my nature stuff) I charge $45 for an unframed print and I limit myself to 25 total. Here's why, most are sold to my portrait customers. They know they pay $45 for the first 8 x 10 they buy of themselves, so I have established in their minds a level. I am more interested in keeping them happy customers than I am making money off my other art. I limit to 25 because I have never printed more than 10 of any image. If I decide I really want to market this side of my photography I will up to 50 etc on any future images. By the way one client wanted to see who had purchased the other 9 of a particular image. I pulled up an excel spreadsheet with the names addresses, date purchased etc. That impressed them and sale was concluded. It is one thing to say I will only print 25, 50 or 100 but unless you can prove that is what you did then don't claim it. Many of the masters would have an outside party verify that they were destroying a negative but in this day and age of digital and multiple copies from raw files etc it would be hard to prove the original was gone.
I'm right across the street from an art gallery who sells some of my prints. It of course varies on size, but I have some 5x7 black and white matte finish prints that are mounted and matted to 8x10 selling for $35 each.
When I price my artwork, I take all my direct costs (film, printing, modeling fees, MUA fees, etc) and multiply that by 5 and that's where I start selling it. If I'm going to print no more than 25, then I do all that math for 25 prints and sell it at that cost. It makes a little more sense to sread $500 of model/MUA fees over 25 prints versus 1.
If it doesn't sell, I bring the price down. If it starts to move like hotcakes, I raise my prices. I usually introduce them in increments of five. I also sign each one and number it as well.
Of course what that print is worth is really only what that guy is willing to pay for it, but this is the formula that works for me.
Charge what you feel you're worth. If you want to go limited edition, go ahead. But in this day and age how do you guarantee that the original is gone. Are you willing to forever delete all copies of the original after you print, say, 100 copies. I know several photographers who produce limited editions and put a nail through the negative at the end of the run. But even then there's the chance that they had the neg scanned. With digital, there really is no guarantee that all originals have been destroyed. So don't sweat it.
But your leg-work is extremely nice and I'd look into making the finest image you can. If that means printing on 100% cotton rag, museum-grade fine art paper and using pigment based inks, or having it professionally printed, I'd do it. I wouldn't hesitate to charge $75 or so.
I used to do fine art repro and artists generally charged 6X the cost of the imaging, printing and framing for signed editions of 100 and 4X cost for editions of 500. There's no guarantee they won't re-issue. They usually keep the original or sell it for a hell of a lot of money. They have the digital file no matter what so they can always run a second or third edition.
That's paintings and pastels and the like. Seems reasonable for photography too.
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