The Online Photographer

I spoke yesterday of how my writing and comment-moderation workflow here on TOP might need to change. Well, our print sales might need to evolve as well.

I've heard anecdotally from a variety of sources that print sales are slowing across the board, as the tradition of fine printmaking continues to evaporate from the culture of photography. Our print sales have certainly declined. I'm not sure I can ascribe that to anything in the broader culture, however. TOP's audience has constricted to about one-third the size of the audience at peak (2013), although the readers that remain seem much more engaged, devoted, and active—also, they're more dedicated or devoted to photography or however you want to phrase it, more experienced and knowledgeable. TOP doesn't attract hordes of casual visitors looking for shopping advice any more, that's for sure.

Anyway, it might be time for a transition here too. Our old model (taking orders in advance for a limited time and fulfilling them after they were already sold) worked quite wonderfully. But it's a high-volume model. Our best print sale sold ~735 prints, and our most lucrative made $128,000 in profit. Another artist first agreed to make 50 prints, but that 50 sold so rapidly that he agreed to make 100 more. Those vanished as well. Yet another print-sale artist told us that the check we sent her was the largest amount of money she'd earned at one time in her life.

But those days are long gone. Now we struggle to sell 100, and often don't reach 50. And the profits are more modest.

Great good fortune
It's still nothing to sneeze at; not at all. When's the last time you sold 35 prints of a single picture? It's very unusual. The number of photographers who sell 35 prints of one picture in a gallery show are a tiny minority. Most people who have gallery shows would be over the moon to sell 35 total. So I'm grateful we can do that. Looked at objectively, it's still very fortunate that we do so well. Quite wonderful.

It might be time to change the sales model, is all. For one thing, the printer still needs to be paid. The first print is where a lot of the labor is. If we sell 125 prints, the first print is a small proportion of the whole. If the printer is providing 15 prints, it's a larger part of the work. It becomes harder for us to cover that cost. One printer won't work with us unless we can guarantee 100 sales.

So what I'm thinking of is switching to some kind of small-volume model. As you can see from the last post but one, 148 readers put themselves into the category of people who would consider buying a print of "Mennonite Boys Watching Dirt-Track Racing." But how many people actually will buy one? Fifteen per cent? Ten? So call it 15 to 22 sales. And that sounds about right.

So maybe I should have the printer make 15 copies (or 15 and three artist's proofs), and I'll pay him out of my pocket, and then we'll offer the 15 until they sell out. The price would have to be higher doing it that way, but still nothing too onerous. (And sometimes people want to pay more, but that's another post.)

I'd like to try that with reader prints, too. Your prints, I mean. I have in mind three prints by readers. I could ask each person to provide, say, ten copies of his or her print, and then offer them without a deadline. They'd just sell until they sold out. Wouldn't it be nice to make a sale out of the Baker's Dozens, for instance?

I'll have to think about that. Anyway, that's all that this post is trying to say: that I'm thinking about this. The volume model is on the cusp of not making enough volume, so maybe it's just time to change.

Mike

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