Hello,
I'm just emailing you to let you know how much I love your work. I really do love black and white photography and when I searched it on the internet, your site came up. I was looking through all of your photos and there really is something about them that makes you stop and think; every one has its own beauty. They seem to reflect a great deal of simplistic happiness that does still exist, yet many people seem not to see.
Simple things like children playing or walking with a loved one or even standing in the rain. These are the real pleasures that life brings to peoples' lives and I think your work really conveys this. I can see a great deal of my own happiness and of the things that make me happy too. Your photography has somewhat inspired me to search for these things in your own depiction of life.
Yours sincerely,
F.P.
* * *
Yikes. Still no sales. Maybe I should pass the hat as I seem to be so inspiring. Tomorrow a graduate student is coming by to interview me. When sales are slow, I think the best model is to sell (if you can) your prints for big bucks in galleries to people who've got lots of dough and forget about this nickel ante stuff.
You keep the web presence, but you're too big to sell directly over the web. You are now represented by so-and-so gallery.
Do you know that I got three phone calls this week asking if the address on my website was a store?
You can't sell in the galleries and on the web at the same time. Well, you can - but you can't sell at these web prices. Galleries prints - framed - are going to be at least $500 each, probably more. So how can you sell the same print online for $75? Can't do it. I don't know. May be time to do some rethinking.
A few minutes later. Yes. Re-thinking. I know what I'm going to do. (Another crossroads). I'm going to raise the prices on the web so that they are closer to what gallery prices would be - and pursue getting gallery representation. As much as I'm not crazy about the gallery world - I can't see any other way around this web impass. Rather than trying to sell a lot at $75 - I'll see what if anything I can sell at $200. Maybe $250 on the web and $500 in the gallery. Yes - that's what I'm going to go after for the rest of this year. Because frankly, I can't sell enough at $75 a piece to pay the rent. And so I am taking on other jobs: teaching, web design etc. But I would like the prints to pay the way.
4 comments:
Re: searching for Gallery representation.
Robert Motherwell said that he should be considered the Mother Of Modern Art, because he'd been fucked by every gallery in New York.
So be careful, Dave, and always get cash.
Roy: nah. I'm going to charge what I think the prints are worth and look at some other revenue streams assuming that no one will buy them from the web. I've had better luck with art buyers and design firms.
Bill: I'll have to remember that :)
Don't know how relevant this is in NYC, but in Hawaii there are a lot of stores, like Martin & MacArthur or even the ABC stores chain, that stock matted photos by local photographers. Sometimes they even carry numbered prints from limited editions.
If there are similar stores in NYC, perhaps in the more tourist-oriented areas, you might find that they are willing to stock some of your more popular photos, especially if you are willing to protect them from losses if they don't sell somehow.
I have to agree with Roy. There was a study showing that consumers facing too many options for a product in a store were less likely to buy then facing a limited amount of options.
One idea: you have a rotating set of prints for sale any given week/month.
If somebody wants a pring not for sale at any given time they have to go to a gallery or wait utill it is available or pay premium for special order.
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