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10/05/2006: "Prosperity in the Print Market"

For artists seeking success in the print market, there are many choices to be made. Such as should marketing be on a local, regional or national level? Should the artist self-publish or seek representation through an established publisher? Having wrestled those questions to a conclusion, the formula for success can be boiled down to:

• Product
  
• Promotion
  
• Persistence
  
• Public Perception
  

agree in advance these points are subjective and arguable. Still, any artist or publishers wishing to enjoy success in the print market can ill afford to ignore any of them. Some artists take umbrage at their work being described as product. I understand that. A piece of fine art is after all a product of their imagination, skill and creativity. But, the argument is semantical because if you don’t sell it, no one will ever see it. Art prints as a product merely means the artist has created something that appeals to buyers and a pipeline to supply the demand is in place.

Promotion for our purposes here encompasses lots of ground, including advertising, publicity, tradeshows, consumer shows, direct mail, Internet, sales people, gallery visits, alternative spaces and more. If an artist is talented and lucky enough to accomplish creating popular work, then she or he must also possess the ability to promote the product, or employ someone who can master the details therein.

These days, getting to market is changing for artists and for all media for that matter. A cogent look at how this is so is detailed in Chris Anderson’s manifesto on the Change This Web site. It is titled, The Rise and Fall of the Hit – The era of the blockbuster is so over. The niche is now king, and the entertainment industry—from music to movies to TV—will never be the same. You can read it at: http://www.changethis.com/pdf/26.01RiseFallHit.pdf.

Anderson explains why blockbuster hits in the music industry have become archaic. He also cites examples of how other media are suffering. For example, the country’s top-rated TV program in 2006, American Idol, with its 18% audience share would not have ranked in the Top Ten shows during the ‘70s. The examples for the music business are staggering. Twenty-one of the top 100 albums of all time were released in the years 1995 – 2000. The next five years through 2005 produced only two, Norah Jones’ Come Away with Me and Outkast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. Those works barely cracked the list coming in at number 79 and 91, respectively.

Bottom line is that technology is creating diversity. Consumers are responding by embracing previously underappreciated artists and genres in all sorts of media. Why that so many people can find exceptional art from all over the world on site such as Absolute Arts, is proof positive we no longer will accept, nor do we have to, being spoon fed mass media through a very small pipeline. We have our iPods jammed with thousands of tunes and we make playlists of the songs we enjoy hearing. Why then bother to listen to radio for hours just to hear a few fave tunes when we can deliver to ourselves our own eclectic mix.

Tivo and DVR are doing the same with television as HBO, Showtime, Blockbuster and NetFlix all brace for the coming ability to download full-length movies on a mass scale. I read a blog from an Army wife in Germany recently. She is downloading pay-for-view episodes of Gray’s Anatomy and Desperate Housewives on her iPod to keep her in tune with American pop culture. Obviously, we want what we want when we want it how we want it and technology is now able better than ever to deliver on those demands. Daily newspaper readership is at an all-time low, along with weekly magazines.

So how does this all affect the art print business? Well, to start, technology is making it easier for artists to create their own prints and become their own publishers. We’ve come a long way from those first finicky IRIS printers and drum scanners. Just about anyone can afford to own a wide-format printer these days. I’m not advocating it for most, as I believe better results can be had from good professional printers. But, if you have enough geek in you, then you should not be afraid to set up your own print shop. Just be aware that the technology changes quickly and it’s likely far sooner than you have amortized the cost, you’ll be wishing you had waited a little longer when you see the newest iteration of printers hit the market.

I previously proposed that limiting editions should be passé. I still strongly advocate that position…more than ever now, in fact. I believe what mostly gets limited in limited editions is the income of the artist. Sure there are those industry stars that sell oodles of limited prints and gain lots of press along the way. But that’s not the reality for most artists whose careers are more likely to be in the shadows of these few stars. Don’t be discouraged, it’s possible to have a flourishing career without ever gaining fame. The same problems exist in all the arts. Think about how many talented actors, artists, musicians and so forth never are known nationally?

And, now with the advent of ever evolving print-on-demand solutions for fine art prints, how does it make sense to artificially limit the production? No other form of the arts limits production. Why should visual artists rely on an outdated marketing scheme that evolved of editions truly limited by production or costs that no longer hinder modern print artists who embrace digital technology.

Why should an artist be forced to stop selling a print that might have a shelf life of years, which might outlive her and pay her heirs? Is there another reason other than it is how it’s always been done it makes it easier for gallerists to sell their work? Come on, if the product is any good, it can sell all day long in open editions—and at top prices too! Sure, you might get 10% more for a limited edition, but what if you could have sold 400% more? Art is subjective and always will be worth what it’s worth. And, if it’s not that good as a product, it will never reach the “Sold Out” number anyway. So, what’s the point of limited edition digital prints today? Now that you can print to the size desired by the customer and give them what they want when they want it and how they want it, why wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t that help sell a few more prints too?

Technology has created a giant swing in how open edition art prints and posters are sold. Now www.art.com and www.allposters.com, (which owns art.com) command a huge percentage of art sold. Big box retailers from Target to Pier One, even Wal-Mart all have a hand in moving open edition prints. Technology in shipping has made massive quantities of cheap oil paintings from China readily available. I’ve blogged here before about the problems of counterfeiting and how it affects the art industry.

I digress, technology now makes it easier than ever for artists to promote their works in new ways and to find new niches for their work. They are not left to the hope that a publisher will like their work and that the publisher’s galleries will too. You can now create your art and look for new places, alternative spaces, to sell it. Or, as Chris Anderson puts it, “The future of business is selling less of more.” With the giclée, an artist can sell far fewer pieces than in an open edition/poster format and make more money.

It is common for an artist to make less than $1 for a poster sale at the wholesale publisher level. The same image sold in a coffee shop, restaurant, etc., can net an artist 200 times that income or more. Even sales on the Internet through sites like this one give artists an opportunity to sell their works at fair prices with fair markups.

Yet, no successful artist will get that way without persistence. Some get lucky to start with, some grind away for a long to make their luck, but none have ever had a great career in the print market without dogged persistence. Steven Covey aptly calls it, “Keeping the main thing the main thing.”

The right mixes of properly and persistently executed product and promotion will result in popular public perception and an ensuing successful print career. You can study the career of any successful artist in any field and you will find at the heart of each of them a burning desire to succeed, to be persistent to push for greater success. Sure, there are anomalies, J.D. Salinger comes to mind, but the preponderance makes the case for persistence.

As previously stated, art is subjective and public perception plays a huge part in the success of any artist’s career. How it is molded is by different in every case, but similarities do appear. They certainly include the items in the bulleted list above preceding public perception. In the case of museum bound art, the public perception is really in the hands of a small, but mighty group of tastemakers. A recent example of how this is true can be found in a story originally broadcast on ABC’s 20/20 newsmagazine.

John Stossel in a “Give Me a Break” segment titled, You Call This Art—Observers, Artists, Critics Rank Children’s Paintings with the Masters. You can read a transcript of it here: http://abcnews.go.com/2020/GiveMeABreak/story?id=563146&page=1. It shows how some very expensive modern abstract art and some children’s paintings confuse both everyday people and art critics with surprising results. It is eye-opening to read the transcript of the broadcast.

Is it some kind of mortal sin for an artist to paint what his collectors like to buy? Will it keep him from getting into art heaven if he does? Perhaps if art heaven consists of MOMA and other such institutions, then perhaps the answer is yes. I contend an artist can have it all if they manage their careers properly. Not to say a well managed career makes an artist a cinch for museum glory, but just that an artist can be seriously considered and still manage to make a nice living that includes a profitable print career in the mix.

Barney Davey

Replies: 16 Comments

on Monday, October 23rd, Peter Miller said

Nice catalogue of linked recommended and published reading, as well as an art services listings page

on Sunday, October 22nd, Brenda Harness said

I wish more schools would offer art students courses like "the business of art." Burgeoning artists can find someone to teach them how to paint, draw, sculpt or print, but "what to do with your creation" courses are sadly lacking. Most folks turn to books to get this knowledge, and a lucky few have someone's brain they can pick for answers. Most don't, I think. Artists are producing a product, no matter what they might think. Yes, we are inspired to create, but can that inspiration be thoughtfully channeled into something that people want to own, in whatever format?

on Monday, October 9th, Brad said

barneydavey.com
Barney,
Nice catalogue of linked recommended and published reading, as well as an art services listings page.

on Monday, October 9th, Barney Davey said

Brad, my Web site is my name:

on Sunday, October 8th, Brad said

Barney, Did I miss it while scrolling - or did you list your website?

Walt, Liked your take of things as per usual.
"Most likely someone other than you will become rich after you're dead if you succeed."
That would be well enough for me - were they family and friends in the first generation or so.

on Sunday, October 8th, Barney Davey said

Hi and thanks to all who have posted remarks. That the opinions and views are varied is wonderful. It is the essence of what makes art so interesting. Each person gets to judge it by their own standards. It's all good!

Mark, to reply to your question. I wrote a book last year titled, How to Profit from the Art Print Market. It is on Amazon and other digital bookstores. Some validation beyond my own horn tooting here is shown in that the book is offered by the North Light Book Club, which is owned by The Artist's Magazine. It was excerpted in the April issue this year. You can find out more about it on my Web site.

on Saturday, October 7th, walt said

Barney, you did a pretty good job discussing the fact that the kind of art you are talking about is geared to existing markets. There are several principles I�ve come to understand about selling reproductions, prints or multiples:

1. One must have a clear idea of where one stands in the art market to know whether to do original hand produced, limited edition prints or commercially produced photographically based reproductions of original paintings because each have their own kind of status. The reason I know this is because I made a lot of early mistakes which cost me some reputation simply because I was horny for success with no thought for the quality of success I really wanted.

2. Starting your career too soon with mass production can devalue your original work as Jose mentioned. It is better first to establish the high end via original paintings, drawing (or even hand pulled traditional prints if one is a printmaker primarily.) Then the low end will have more value.

3. If you decide to sell prints or repros there are three-- no four critical markets:

A.) Old, established artists can get away with nearly anything. Hand made original prints are usually the most beneficial at this level because they can get a very good price based on their creators reputation and past marketability. This allows an audience who have not been able to afford to buy larger work into the market. We usually only see their work reproduced as reproductions when they become museum posters or in commercial poster shops long after they are dead. I�m talking about high fine art. If your work appears too soon on t-shirts and coffee mugs that is about as high as your gonna go. Picasso is a made man so his images can appear anywhere.

B.) Print makers who make original hand signed, numbered limited edition prints the old fashioned way rarely cross over into painting and generally build their entire reputation on printmaking (with maybe a few exceptions.)

C.) Photo transferred and printed reproductions are for those who begin to understand that they will never make the high art market but fit into what I call the popular or more common market. This includes artists who are doing traditional images such as wildlife illustration, landscapes, clich� images of people and children-- you know like the sculpture of lovers embracing we�ve all seen turned into a lamp stand�and even more contemporary imagery that is easy enough for a popular market. You can see this sort of thing on the walls at McDonalds and Burger King. Thomas Kincaid is maybe near the higher end of this level. There are some others who take it to a much higher level such as John Stobart who does rather realistic historical harbor recreations in minute detail and has a strong market in professional d�cor�you�ll see at least one Stobart in nearly any lawyers office.

Reproductions include everything from giclees and cheaper forms of digital prints, offset litho, commercial silkscreen, and even black and white or color Xerox�s. The reproduction market is quite different and has a much lower status than the world of high original fine art prints. It falls much closer to the world of commercial illustration. (Do remember I have been an illustrator and still teach illustration and am not knocking it as such. Just a fact-- well until fairly recent times. Some contemporary Illustrators have begun to define reputations in certain markets--especially among younger audiences--and have begun to sell work more like fine art.) It is this popular market that will be attracted to the kind of work done to please an audience.

D.) There is an even lower strata today�I call it the low-fi underground. It is also part of the popular market but matches a very young audience. �Zines, self published comics, posters and other repros which usually fit into a specific trend or craze, or culture cult are in this category such as Goth and Horror imagery, the new Cheesecake erotica, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Anime, etc.. At the early levels one can easily rake in some cash using the cheapest of repro methodology and equipment. However it is very hard to move up from this category. Only a few have really broken out and moved into either category mentioned above. Some have made a good name and living evolving into comic artists if they were actually ever really good at it. But you can sell almost anything at this level.

Now I know that to some extent the above is based on certain long held biases. However they are biases that will not go away quickly as these levels of status have been around for a very long time in variation and under different names. I still say much of what passes for art at any level is crap these days. Which only goes to show that at least in this country we�ll buy almost anything as long as its cheap. So make sure you know who you are and what your art is about before buying into any of these markets. A wrong move early can keep you out of a market you may well fit later. The high market is absolutely the hardest to break into and has the longest memory if only because it is a much smaller club. If you think of yourself as a serious contemporary artist who wants to participate in the hi-art dialogue you are a probably a glutton for punishment and maybe a saint because it will most likely never happen for you, take forever. But if it does happen in your lifetime I'll sing your praises! Most likely someone other than you will become rich after you�re dead if you succeed.

on Saturday, October 7th, jos� said

At the time when I acted on my decision that what I really wanted to be was an artist, prints were the �in� thing to do here in Portugal. You saw them everywhere, framers shop-windows, bookshops, you even saw them at exhibitions! The public recognized the artists because they were everywhere, but did they buy the art work? No, they bought the prints, and the number of exhibitions showing prints reached nauseating heights. You knew the artists but it reached a point where you just didn�t want to see anymore prints and wished they would move on from what was starting to come across as self-infatuation.

Back then it wasn�t even an issue for me. I wanted to concentrate on getting a body of work together and defining a style people could identify as being mine. I saw no point in spreading myself too thin without having a sufficient [and coherent] body of �real� work to back up the fire-works on display at the framers. I could understand and accept that a major corporation might purchase a number of prints from an artist to hand out as gifts, or that a gallery might have some made to promote the artist�s work, and even that the artist make a little more on the side for himself selling his �artist�s proofs�. But I couldn�t understand or get myself to accept the trivialisation that was going on on such a massive scale.

I resisted for 20 years. Two weeks ago I succumbed. I gave in for the first time to the temptation of seeing a painting of mine being reproduced 250 times. I looked back on all those years and felt there was sufficient work there to back it up. And I was asked � it was not a personal whim. Is it important? To me it is: I sell my work, the original thing. In my book reproductions should remain a professional transaction with a third party, upon request and interest of the third party. The artist gets paid for signing the prints and for the painting if the painting remains in the possession of whoever is arranging and selling/promoting the prints. Beyond his �artist�s proofs� the artist should not be required or even asked to �peddle� the numbered prints, and if, for whatever reason, he does, there should be an extra margin of gain for him in that transaction as well. But that�s just the way I see things.

That technology now allows me to make prints of my work does not impress me in the least because my work is not the prints, it is something else � it is the Art. There are better uses to this new technology for the benefit of our work than mass production from our own initiative: keeping our sites on the net updated and appealing, handing out or selling a self-designed Art-book resorting to the site Michael Corbin told us about in his last blog, creating interactive material that costs hardly a penny these days to hand over to galleries, businesses, collectors, friends�

These are things that can add value to our Art, there are many ways to make ourselves be seen without reducing our work to something trivial for no other reason than a whim.

on Friday, October 6th, Mark said

Don't mean to be rude Barney, but who are you and why should we listen to you? What expertise do you have here?

Now I agree with some of what you said. I am thinking of going into the Reproduction Market (not print market as what you are talking about are not prints but reproductions, yes, there is a difference, a big difference) yet I can not approach it with the mind set, as you sugest, of, I will paint what sells, as most of us don't know what will sell anyway. My plan now is to check out my statistics that Absolute Arts provides me and base my desisions on what paintings get the most hits. But future paintings will be based on my gut feeling and need to paint, rather then will it sell as a reproduction. I believe that if an artists puts thier whole emotion into a work or body of work some will resonate with the public. I think one's odds at selling such work as reproductions are as good as trying to figure out what the public wants. Even huge corporations spend thousands of dollars trying to figure out what sells and I would guess they are right only about 10%, or less, of the time, but they will not tell you that.

I do not have a problem with reproductions so long as they are sold as just that, copies of an original, and only worth what the reproduction sells for. I have a friend who bought a Kinkeade reproduction for his wife, he was so proud, thought he made a good investment as well, as that was what he was told by the salesman. I didn't have the heart (at first) to tell him he was scammed, plus for what he paid for the Kinkeade he could have purchased one of my originals, so maybe I was felling a little sense of revenge, but I did tell him eventually. Just go to ebay and see how many Kinkeades are selling for very little.

My point is that reproductions have a place but that place must be kept in perspective. Doing reproductions does not mean an artist has sold out or that it will diminish his/her work but that it is just another avenue for exposure.

on Thursday, October 5th, Vick said

I don't think it's a mortal sin to paint what the public wants to buy, but isn't that what Thomas Kinkeade does, and isn't that why most artists hate the guy? What is the difference between that and making greeting cards? If you always have that in the back of your mind "will it sell", I think it will just create a paralysis in the creativity and inhibit the risks and leaps we all embrace as artists.

You can use art to elevate and illuminate, not just pander to already established tastes. Most of the big art movements were scandals the first time the work was hung. No one is better situated to help expand the mind of humankind than artists, or if not expand the mind, help people find their heart and soul again, to feel the pulse of their own inner music. That is what really great art can do, and maybe that sells and maybe it doesn't. Maybe it just plants that little seed of recognition that blooms in that person 10 years down the line. That is important work.

I think the other factor is reproductions have a negative connotation because the public doesn't really know how to value a giclee. Some artists do limited editions, some keep running them off with no end in site. How will that effect the value? Collectors don't know and neither do the artists.

I personally can't really think about "will it sell" when I am making art, just as I can't be aware that the paint tube I am using costs $35 when I am painting. I only notice it by default at the store when I buy it. I did know an artist like that,aware of the cost of his materials, and he would dab out the color like it was a precious golden mouse turd. Not much creativity happening with that miserly approach.

on Thursday, October 5th, Barney Davey said

Brad, I don't know what the ’~ you are talking about. I sent an MS Word doc in and it converted apostrophes and paragraph marks to weird symbols in HTML format.

Chris, it reads like you make your art from the heart and hope it is what people want. Sometimes that works, but not always. If you study who is successful and figure out what you could do that is unique, yet retains or reflects some of what that successful artist is doing, you might enjoy some more commercial success. All artists do this. If you listen to music from certain eras, you'll hear the same influences,such as Indian sitars in the late '60s. Or any art movement, Warhol, Indianer, Max, etc., so nothing wrong in allowing your creativity to be influenced by others. In my book, nothing wrong in choosing the most successful to help inform your own work if your goal is to attain a degree of commercial success. Success is in getting what you want. It has nothing to do with what other people think it is. They can judge and criticize, but if you are satisfied, then those things are irrelevant. I hope for you in time, sooner than later, that you become that big seller...go get 'em!

on Thursday, October 5th, Brad said

Barney,
Did you figure out why your blog had so many symbols in it? ’~etc.

on Thursday, October 5th, walt said

I think there is a good and bad side to this argument. Yes, technology makes it possible for far more artists to gain exposier and find a market by avoiding the relationship with the traditional tastemakers-- critics, curators and gallery owners or art brokers.

The flip side is that now the market is flooded with the worst crap ever. It turns out that the gate keepers actually did a relatively good job of focusing on the good stuff. In the end if everyone is an artist than no one is an artist.

John Stossel is a very brilliant idiot. Diversity is not a philosophy or a political movement, not even a common sense decision. It is a fact of life like it or not. The world is so populated that no matter what we become more diverse. We no longer have a choice in these matters. We will all become niche fillers one way or another just to survive. Every commercial artist eventually understands this. In the end we are all commercial artists.

In a way, maybe the only true artists left are the dilitants and the hobbyists who do it soley for the love of the process and the art--even if it sucks.

on Thursday, October 5th, gabriella said

Barney - the "you call this Art?" article is typical neo-Con rallying of the troops. This argument has been presented for the past 40+ years, resurfaces from time to time to give folks the opportunity to vent from a point of view of ignorance.
I suspect the print market does much more for the producers of prints than it does for artists. Over the years I have visited many garage sales where prints made for public consumption, of the most trite and sentimental sort, are practically begging to be given away. Much of what sells as "limited edition" reproductions by framing companies come up for say in our local Buy and Sell. People have been duped into thinking that their limited edition purchases are worth resale value, when they are only worth the cost of the paper on which they are printed, the cost of the printing process, and the highly elevated, triple and quadruple matted expesive framing presentation. Now, some of these artists have made a handsome profit from this spurious practice, and there will be many more to do so in the coming years. With the advent of increasingly more sophisticated reproduction technology, the world will be flooded with an ocean of images, many of which will be largely considered throwaway and easily replaceable. But for me, give me the hand-wrought, considered object that carries a lifetime worth of personal resonance and lastingness. And No! Walmart and Target are not the purveyors of the kind of art I am referring to here.

on Thursday, October 5th, Matt said

Some good info Barney. Thanks.

I just read John Stossel's piece: "Give Me A Break" Interesting but really nothing new. I think this quote from the article is very fitting.

"There's some art that's validated by the establishment or by the media and then there's the rest," said artist Deborah Gilbert.

And this quote takes me to your question "Is it some kind of mortal sin for an artist to paint what his collectors like to buy?" Nope, not at all. As you say an artist that manages his/her career well i.e. marketing him/herself and the art- can have it all.

on Thursday, October 5th, chris said

I have been attempting to sell on the net for years. So far its been okay. There is no chance of me making a decent living out of my art although i wish there was. I keep on donating works to places i know that may be able to sell them and at the same time give me exposure and to date its not really working that well for me. I trust there is something else i could be doing but at this point i dont see what that is. I just keep on making my art because i essentially love to make art. If people buy it... then that is good. If they like it that is nice. In time i might be a big seller. At this point in time that seems a future away.