painting $

July 27, 2006 12:15 PM

Pricing making album cover art:

One of the more difficult aspects in making art is pricing it to sell. My wife is a moderately succesful artist and was approached (out of the blue) by a regional band to do their next album cover. This is the first time doing this for a non-friend so things are up in the air. I am not looking for people to offer price suggestions, but if someone happens to know of a resource that talks about pricing of making art for albums I'd love to hear of it.

posted by edgeways to media & arts (4 comments total)

Yes! The Graphic Artists Guild pricing guide book has a number of ways to do this - hourly, by piece, etc. - and is an invaluable resource for anyone doing this kind of work.
posted by luriete at 12:27 PM on July 27, 2006

The book luriete recommends could be helpful but it's geared towards Graphic Designers, not people who generally create non-marketing/promotional art.

If I were your wife I would simply ask the band its budget and she can determine whether she's interested or not based on that.

I'm a web designer and have flat hourly fees for much of the work I do. However, those prices are outside the budget of some of my favorite clients. As a result, I simply ask them their budget and based on how much I want to work with them, I decide whether I want to work for that price. In my experience, clients who won't say their budget don't have one and are a pain in the ass to work for and I no longer will do so.
posted by dobbs at 12:50 PM on July 27, 2006

When it comes to a painting I will also say it's pretty important to determine whether the work is "work-for-hire" or not. The painting you make for them, is it yours and they have persmission to use it, or it is now theirs and belongs to them? Obviously you should charge more if it's the latter, they'll own the rights to that creation.
posted by visual mechanic at 1:10 PM on July 27, 2006

yeah, we've (my wife and I, as I am her manager) had the ascribing which rights discussion and have a pretty clear idea where to go on that front. Thanks for the reminder though.

good idea dobbs
posted by edgeways at 1:16 PM on July 27, 2006