Rates of pay and artist's fees are important factors in running a business and earning a living, and you should bear in mind that prices for work rarely if ever can be reduced once a high price is set. New graduates in particular can be tempted to set prices too high for degree show work and thus 'trap' themselves in a market price bracket too high for their future sales to sustain.
Self-employed artists (when taking on short-term contracts of between one and five days and with experience of their field) should offer a daily rate set around £175-£300 per day. This rate decreases when the contract stretches beyond a working week up to twenty-one days. Artists should work for no less than £20 hour; artists in London should charge around 7.5% on top of this for London Market Allowance.
Voluntary work in the visual arts is an important way to get experience in a new field, and new graduates and practitioners without much experience in a specific field may consider taking this route when starting out.
Gallery commissions can run between 33% and 100%, but selling artworks through boutique shops and other exclusive channels can make it as much as 250%. In all cases, commission should be negotiated with the organisation or company selling the work, and should be in your initial contract of exhibition or if you are represented by a commerical gallery.
Guideline artist fees are as follows:
Thes fees are for guidance only and should not necessarily be expected or demanded by practitioners. For a fuller discussion about artist fees, including downloadable guides to pay, invoicing, tax and other financial issues, see the [a-n] website's Fees and Payments section. There is also a specific Good Practice in Paying Artists section which may be useful when negotiating fees with organistions.
Two interesting reports published in 2005 are the Arts Council England report Artists in Figures: a statistical portrait of cultural occupations, and the Institute for Employment Research bulletin A Balancing Act: artists' labour markets and the tax and benefits system, both available for free.
Pricing work can be a difficult task. As part of being a self-employed artist you are legally required to keep records of your sales by keeping copies of your invoices. In addition, expenses are an important aspect of weighing up the costing and pricing of work.
For a useful guide on how to think about pricing your work, see the Me, Me, Me... An Artists' Introduction to Self-Promotion.
When creating work, there are the usual costs of materials, equipment, travel, studio rent, utility bills, and services such as framing or casting. It is a difficult task pricing work when first starting out, Whatever price level is decided, these should be adhered to. Varying prices on the same piece of work in a series of exhibitions, for example, undermines the 'market' and effects the confidence of any potential buyer.
An excellent resource when considering payments is the a-n website's Pricing and Fees toolkit, and article on Getting Paid, both available for non-subscribers. They also provide an article on Negotiating a better rate of pay.