1/ With edition season underway, I see a lot of questions from artists on how they should price their editions. The consensus answer I often see is the total cost of all editions should be roughly equal to your 1/1 price, but I think that's wrong. A quick example:
2/ Take @notjohnlestudio and let's just say his average 1/1 sale is ~250◎. So based on the logic above, if he released 100 editions, each should be priced at 2.5◎. Or if he released 250 editions, they'd go for 1◎.
I think that is WAY TOO LOW. Here's why:
3/ John's pricing is constrained at the high end by the tiny collector base who can pay 250◎+ works. With a small collector set, competition is decreased, keeping his prices artificially low.
4/ As the pricing goes down (for editions), the collector base who can afford it goes up at an EXPONENTIAL rate, not a linear one. So setting your price based on a linear scale doesn't always make sense. What I mean is...
5/ the market for a 10◎ @notjohnlestudio is probably 100x bigger than the market at 250◎, not 25x. That's non-linear. As the # of potential buyers grow from 20 for his 1/1 to 2000 for a 10◎ edition, he should be able to extract MORE total value from an edition drop than a 1/1.
6/ A real life example here would be the car market. In 2021, Ford sold 1.8MM vehicles while Porsche sold 69K. So Ford sold 26x more vehicles than Porsche. Using linear pricing, we'd say a Ford should cost 1/26th of a Porsche, right?
7/ In reality, it's only ~1/4th the cost to buy a Ford bc the size of the market at $25K is WAY bigger than the market at $100K. You see the same in almost all categories of goods when comparing an average good to the luxury comparable.
8/ I will say, this does not apply to all artists. If you sell for 5◎ and release 50 editions for 0.1◎, you may not even sell out. That's bc you're not increasing your pool of buyers very much between 5◎ and 0.1◎. If this is the case, I'd ask if an edition is right for you.
9/ Now, this pricing guidance serves to maximize your total return as an artist, but may not be the right strategy for you. If you want to drive secondary sales, you may need to price lower so buyers have room to profit. Set prices based on your goal, not one collector's opinion.