Art Print Pricing Calculator

Because Fixed Overhead — the one-time costs like proofing and file setup — is divided across every print in the edition to get Cost per Print. A larger Edition Size spreads that fixed cost more thinly per print, lowering Cost per Print, which in turn lowers the artist's asking price and the Suggested Retail Price built on top of it. The tradeoff is that a larger edition needs more prints to actually sell before Break-Even Prints is reached, even though each one is individually cheaper to price.

Suggested Retail Price is what a buyer pays; Artist Net per Print is what the artist actually receives after the gallery's commission is deducted from that retail price. The gap between them is exactly the Gallery Commission percentage of the retail price — at the default 50% commission, the artist nets half of what the print sells for at retail, which is why Desired Profit Margin has to be set high enough to leave a worthwhile net after that cut, not just a worthwhile retail number.

Edition Size is a fixed choice you make up front — how many prints exist, full stop. Break-Even Prints is calculated from the economics: it's the number of prints that must sell, at Artist Net per Print, to cover total production cost (Fixed Overhead plus Print Cost Each times Edition Size). If Break-Even Prints comes out lower than Edition Size, the edition turns a profit once it sells through; if it's close to or above Edition Size, the edition is priced too thin to reliably recover its costs even if every print sells.

Not exactly, because Gallery Commission is applied on top of the profit-adjusted price, not held constant in dollar terms. Raising Desired Profit Margin raises the artist's pre-gallery asking price directly, which raises Suggested Retail Price, and Artist Net per Print is a fixed percentage of that retail price. So Artist Net per Print does rise when Desired Profit Margin rises, but the gallery is also taking a larger dollar commission on the higher retail price at the same time.