In response to J Wesley Brown's comment, let me say that my blog post is about the pricing of the prints themselves. Pricing of frames is a separate thing and much more straightforward - it can be based on your costs, which are easy to calculate. You will price the work unframed and add the frame price to that.
Be careful of spending too much money on framing; unless you sell out your show you're going to be paying for a bunch of unsold frames. That's not as much of a problem if you can reuse those unsold frames for your next show. (You'll only be able to reuse those frames for shows where you stick to a standard print size. I've been printing 12 x 18" prints for 35 years, but I also do some other sizes and shapes.)
Let's say a typical show consists of 25 prints and you sell 3. You will only have to buy 3 more frames for your next show if you can reuse those 22 unsold frames. After your 10th exhibition, you either have 220 unsold framed prints heaped all around your home or 22 slightly battered reusable frames and a drawer of loose prints. Let's say that the frames and mats cost $50 each (counting your labor at the usual artist's rate of a penny per hour) and that you sold the prints for $1000 each. You will have taken in $15,000 in sales from those 10 shows (10 x 3 x $1000 x 50%), of which you will have spent either $12,500 (10 x 25 x $50) or, with reusable frames, $2600 (25 x $50, for the first show, + 9 x 3 x $50, for the next 9 shows). That's a difference of about $10,000.
Another way to save money is to just show the same work for all 10 shows, but that is a very boring thing to do and it will stunt your evolution as an artist.
Please note that I don't even mention having someone else frame your work; if your frames cost you $400 each, which is easy to spend at a framer's, your framing cost will be $100,000 for those 10 shows (10 x 25 x $400).
Finally, let me say that you probably didn't choose to be an artist because you really wanted to spend lots of time working as a framer for a penny per hour. Ask yourself if you might not prefer to hang your prints unmatted with magnets (put roofing nails in the wall behind the 4 corners of your print). This is becoming quite a common practice at swanky photo galleries (including Blue Sky). You can be hip and frugal at the same time. You'll save a bundle on shipping costs as well as framing costs. We also have some standard size frames at Blue Sky, which we can pop your matted prints into for the duration of your show. Some other museums and galleries can also do this, but you'll need to find out what size frames they have before you cut your mats.
P.S. - "anonymous" comments that perhaps the price should reflect the fact that it takes the most time to make the first print, a medium amount of time to make a subsequent darkroom print, and that it's a breeze to make a subsequent inkjet print. Given the aforementioned usual artist's rate of a penny per hour, that difference in printing time is inconsequential. What you say is logical, but I have never heard of a photographer charging more for print #1 than for the subsequent prints.
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Let's compare the pricing model for photographs to other products. Most other consumer goods charge a premium for customers who make early purchases. You can be first in line to buy that new pair of sneakers for $150. If you wait a few months you can pick up the same pair on clearance for $30. The same with TVs, computers, cars, furniture, or any other consumer good.
This model extends to the creative arts. When you buy a first edition book you pay a premium because you're buying it early. You could wait to buy the same book in paperback for less, or get it at the library for free. Movies, music, video games and every other mass produced creative product work according to the same model. The first person in line pays more. Later folks pay less. Every facet of our economy outside the art world works according to this model.
Why should photography work by a different model? Photography is a mass producible creative product. Although that's always been true, it is now more than ever. Push a button and you can make x copies of any photo. At the broadest, lowest resolution levels of distribution every famous image is now in circulation on the web, the internet's version of the clearance rack.
But the pricing model is upside down. Instead of paying a premium for early purchases, art buyers often pay a premium for later ones (later into the edition). What?!
Wouldn't it make more sense to structure the price more like first edition books? If you buy the first print made it should cost more. Buy one of the first 10 and it costs a little less. Or buy off the clearance rack later in the process for cheap.
This model eliminates the artificial need for editions. The only reason to edition work is to protect investment value. This serves a financial purpose but we all know it's basically bullshit artifice.
By charging more for early versions of photographs one could still protect that value. Early purchasers would never see their investment decrease. Early prints could be marked serially 1, 2, 3, etc, so for art collectors the market would still work. In fact the marketplace would organically edition work as needed just as it does with every other consumer item.
One extra benefit would be that because early purchase was rewarded it would stimulate art sales, possibly creating a stampeded toward works just as they're released. The other benefit is that the model would still provide prints to less rich collectors (who don't necessarily care about investment value but just want to own good photos) to acquire good work later in time (off clearance).
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