Editioning

Once you have decided on the number in an edition, it is set. You have made a public commitment to your collectors to only produce that number. Making any more than this number devalues both the works you’ve sold and your reputation. Do this and you will be undercutting your own market.

What happens if, for example you make an edition of 5, you sell out of the run and there’s still demand? It is acceptable to produce another edition of the work only if there is a significant different size or medium. If the sold-out edition of 5 was A0 then making an edition of 100 in A5 with the same image is acceptable. Another alternative is making the image using a different printing technique.

You cannot price your work until you have decided on the edition number. The number of times you duplicate the work affects the value. The lower the number of works in the edition the more exclusive and hard to get the work will be. This gives it a higher value. Conversely the higher the edition number, the work becomes more available and affordable.

Often people charge a slightly higher rate for the first and last work in the edition. Many artists feel these works have a special significance. This is acceptable and down to personal taste, and the ability to sell them.

The numbers of works you produce in an edition is up to you and is dependent on your objectives. If you feel like you’ve made a work that will be very popular and are keen to get it out into the world produce a large edition. Likewise if you wanted to keep the work affordable but still needed to cover your costs.

Alternatively, you may prefer a small edition to keep the feeling of a rare or exclusive work. Lower edition runs also make sense if you have smaller audience. Making a large run is unnecessary, if you’re unlikely to sell them all.

In any case, you do not need to produce all the work at once, as you may choose to print works as orders come in. But you must not increase an edition once you have decided on the size.

This talk by Medeia Cohan Petrolino covers approaches to pricing editions

For reasons lost in the mists of time, most editions tend to be odd numbers under 10 – 3, 5, 7, 9. After that, larger editions tend to go up by 5s – 25, 30, 35 – but there are no steadfast rules about this. It’s easier to work to established norms than make an edition of an ‘unusual’ number for the market.

Often, artists will write ‘AP’ on some of the edition, standing for ‘artist proof’.

APs sit outside the edition number, so you might have an edition of 5 works plus 1 AP. An AP tends to hold a higher value than the rest of an edition run.

An Artist proof is a test print of the production process. This means they it might look little different from the rest of an edition run.

Even though digital processes do not need these touch ups, the tradition of making APs has remained. This is a slightly grey area in terms of edition size. It should not be seen as a way to increase a set edition size.

It is good practice for artists to keep at least 1 AP of each work for yourself. It is easy to end up with none of your own work and, if your prices increase, no way to directly cash in on this increase in value.

Numbering an edition is simple. Write in pencil on the front margin or back of the print. The front bottom corner of a work is a popular place as it makes its status as an edition visible.

As an example for or an edition of 5 you would number copies 1/5, 2/5, 3/5 etc – this would be pronounced as ‘one of five’, ‘two of five’ etc.

Specific mediums present particular challenges for artists in relation to pricing and editioning. Below, artist Stuart Croft (1970-2015) talks about pricing and editioning film work.