Would You Like to Sell Your Print on TOP?

Are you a photographic printmaker? Would you like a chance to sell one of your prints to a large audience?

From time to time we have print sales here on TOP. The arrangements are very straightforward—I market the sale, and take 20% of the gross proceeds; the photographer fulfills the sales (i.e., makes and ships the prints), and keeps 80% of the gross proceeds. This sale won't be any different.

Many of our sales have done very well. Even a modest sale can earn $3,000, and the most successful ones have earned for the photographers the equivalent of a generous annual salary.

"Wisconsin #7" was our first successful Print Offer, in 2006.

Many readers have expressed a desire to have their own prints considered for one of these sales.

So that's what we're going to try. For a sale scheduled for late Spring or early Summer 2012, we'll go through a search process to find three to five truly exceptional prints to offer.

Note well those words "truly exceptional"—we're definitely not looking for work that's just "good enough." Even unknown photographers can take world-class pictures!

Contests, bah
We don't usually even like "contests," because, all too often, contests aren't staged for the benefit of participants—the photographers. They're staged as a way to get free publicity, free pictures, or cheap publication rights for the promoters. And we don't approve of those motives. So, to begin with:

1. The entry fee for participating is $0, £0, ¥0—or, in any other currency, 0. Zero.
2. At no time will we make any claim to the rights to your work. You always retain all your rights. Naturally, if you're going to participate, it's expected that you'll want to go along with the process, but all legal copyright and ownership rights, and all privileges appertaining thereunto, remain with you at all times.
3. We will treat winners exactly as we treat any of our other Print Offer photographers. TOP will earn no more and no less from this sale than we always do. And you will have the same control over your sale that any other of our featured photographers have over theirs.

Here's how it's gonna work

1. Three times in the coming months, I'll ask people to send me JPEGs of prints they've made that they feel are particularly beautiful and that they think would sell well.

2. Each time, I'll pick a bunch—say, eight to 12—of the submissions I like best and put them up on the site to allow TOP readers to comment on them—and perhaps vote on which ones they like best. Any comments or voting will be advisory, not binding.

3. Using the comments and the vote, I'll select between one and five finalists. I'll ask each finalist to write a paragraph or two about the picture for when we post them again.

4. After we've gone through this process three times, we'll have as many as 15 finalists, and hopefully no fewer than ten. I'll then ask each finalist to submit a proof print to me, identical in every way to the print they will be providing for buyers. There will of course be certain requirements of the prints—materials quality, permanence, etc. Commercial prints (Costco, SmugMug, etc.) will not be allowed, and you might as well know that up front. You won't have to make the print yourself, necessarily, but if someone else makes it for you it will need to be a custom lab or exhibition printer who I can talk to. (Just as a practical matter, you should know that you will make more money on your sale if you make your prints yourself. Also, Ctein tells me is willing to be the custom printer of digital prints for participants who can't print their work or don't have a favored printer of their own.)

5. From the prints, I'll decide which pictures to offer in the sale.

I reserve the right to cancel the proposed sale at any time, for any reason. I can't foresee doing so, but I reserve the right anyway.

For participants, here's what you get: initial selections get published on TOP. Finalists get their pictures published a second time, along with a short text about the picture. This ain't nuthin'—as photographers who have been featured on TOP in the past know, it's good publicity. Often, people write to me telling me that their own sites got a nice viral bump after being mentioned here.

The exposure here of Gordon Lewis's "Precipitation" in a sale in 2009 resulted in further publication for the image.

Of course, the chosen pictures get offered in a Print Offer on TOP. There's no guarantee of how much you'll earn from this—and no limit, either. How much you earn will be entirely dependent on how many of your prints people buy, with no guarantees. That's the way it always is with our sales.

Random intervals
So, how am I going to keep people from "gaming" the process? Simple—nobody will know when any of this is going to take place. I'm just going to throw it up at random intervals. Whoever is reading the site at those times can participate if they want to. This will favor regular readers over people who might come here just to participate in the "contest"—without excluding the latter. (And I don't want to exclude them, either. Everyone's welcome here—that's pretty much the game on the web.)

So how should you get prepared? Here's what I'm going to ask for when the time comes:

First, you should choose a print that you particularly like. If it's just a digital file and you think it would make a good print, well...I can't force you to print it until the finalist stage, of course, but you really should bear in mind that this is going to be a print sale, not a JPEG sale. A picture you've only seen as a file on your monitor is simply not the same thing as a good print.

I've always liked the JPEG of this picture of a local landmark I took. But I've never been able to make an adequate print of it. It happens sometimes.

I suspect many photographers these days look at most of their pictures as digital files only, and assume that the printing stage is a mere mechanical afterthought and that any print is good enough. Not so...printing is an art form in itself, and the quality of prints varies widely. Your picture might be far and away the most popular picture among our readers throughout this whole process, winning all the votes and garnering glowing comments, but it still won't make the cut if the print you send me at the end is sub-par. So pick a good picture, yes, but make sure it's also a good print.

Second, it must be a picture you took, and that you own the rights to, 100%, free and clear. You will have to be able to sign a legally binding document to that effect.

Any kind of picture and any kind of print will be eligible, but in general I will be slightly prejudiced in favor of traditional techniques (because buyers are), moderately prejudiced in favor of prints made by the photographer, and strongly prejudiced in favor of pictures that are photographs as opposed to photo-illustrations. That is, heavily Photoshopped images won't be disqualified outright, but they'd have to be very special to overcome my bias against them. (Either that, or just make sure I can't tell they're Photoshopped!)

What you should have ready to submit when the time comes is a JPEG that is 800 pixels wide and saved in the sRGB colorspace. It should be labeled as follows:

TPS[hyphen][your last name][hyphen][your title or identifier].jpg

With no spaces. An example:

TPS-johnston-apple.jpg

"TPS" stands for "TOP Printmaker Sale."

Do not send your pictures now. It won't help. You must follow the instructions I'll provide when we get this process started. I assume I'll be getting lots of submissions, so I won't consider any submission that doesn't conform to all the stated conditions exactly, including "how to submit."

We offered Mike's fine print of Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother"
in 2006, from the negative in the Library of Congress.

Nota bene!
A final word to the wise: if you can't take the heat, please stay out of the kitchen. It takes courage and a thick skin to submit your work to judgement. Just putting your work up on a big site where lots of people will be commenting on it practically guarantees that you're going to get a few comments that could hurt your feelings. You can get dissed here at any point in the process. Prepare yourself for that. But please do remember, we're looking for pictures that make the best prints, and prints that people will want to buy for display—not necessarily "the best picture." A rejection is not necessarily a judgement of you or your work. It does not necessarily mean your picture isn't "good." It just means it didn't suit the needs of this particular market. And that's not the end of the world.

More anon....

Mike

UPDATE (Tuesday): So many people have asked so many questions, in the Comments and privately, that all I can say is that not all of the details have been finalized yet. Ctein will eventually write a column about what's involved in fulfilling a sale like this one. Other details and conditions will have to be specified when the time comes.

The biggest question is whether international readers will be invited to participate. That is a complicated question; fulfilling a print sale from overseas would be an expensive and involved proposition, and would necessitate charging international shipping to North American buyers, which might hurt sales. When Peter Turnley did it, the prints were made in Paris and he flew them to New York personally for professional fulfillment there.

Sorry I can't answer all the rest of the questions now. Not only do I not even know all the answers, but if I answered everyone individually I wouldn't have any time left to do anything else. But thank you for your interest and enthusiasm! Please stay tuned.

UPDATE #2: Sorry—Ctein reminded me that there is one obvious thing I haven't made entirely clear: a lot of the details are up to the artist. That is, you decide what size you want your print to be, you decide who prints it, you decide if you want to limit the number or not, you decide what the selling price will be, etc. I will of course work closely with you to make sure you understand all the implications of the choices, and to help you make the best choice—and there are (I suppose) some extremes I wouldn't go along with (in the past I've always reached consensus with everyone). But a lot of the details are ultimately the decision of the photographer.

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Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Comments

[Hugh]

Great idea.

Thankyou Mike.

[Steven L.]

So if you do this "three times in the coming months" can we enter an image each time? Or more than one image each time?

[Tim Huggins]

I think this is really awesome. I'm not anywhere near having a image (let alone a print) worthy of submission; but it has officially become a goal of mine now. I don't need to actually have it on the sale either, simply convincing myself an image I shot was worthy for submission would be enough.

Of course I'll have to figure out the whole printing scene. I've started printing some of my images and feel in a little over my head.

I look forward to seeing the results (and sales) from this!

An aside regarding a previous article, any thoughts on selling an "inexpensive" version (and yes I understand that the prices on these sales are relatively inexpensive, but not relative to me)?

[Paul C.]

Wish I had bought "Wisconsin #7".

[Steve G, Mendocino]

Mike:

Looking forward to it. Hope I make it to the actual print phase, since an 800 pixel wide JPEG is not what I do - I think of myself as a printmaker at least as much as a photographer.

And I've been practicing for the heat of the kitchen, going down to SF Camerawork for their monthly portfolio reviews.

[Mike Johnston]

Steve G,
The JPEG is just for review. I simply don't have the resources to review submissions as prints.

Mike

[Michel]

Really excited about this Mike. Not sure if I'll submit anything, but I am interested to see what other TOP readers will present.

Question: are model release forms required for street photos submitted for this?

[Steven ralser]

Looking forward to it. How long will we have to submit images from when you announce?

Steve

[Mike Johnston]

"Question: are model release forms required for street photos submitted for this?"

No, model releases are not required for art photographs. At least not in the U.S.

Mike

[ctein]

Dear Folks,

An aside for people who are terribly worried about someone rigging the vote.

Yeah, there are ways someone can jigger things to get to get themselves a few extra votes. But Mike has a readership of roughly 30,000. If you've participated in one of his online polls, you know that they garner thousands of votes.

Who knows what response this little game will get, but it's not likely that a few votes on way or another will matter.

ESPECIALLY since Mike is going to be vetting, filtering and weeding entries every step of the way. This is not so much a contest as market research. Mike will still decide what is sales-worthy.

This is supposed to be a bit of fun that opens the sales up to new participants and gets a sense of what the readership might be interested in. (And, yes, everyone understands that "interest" not-equals "purchase" and there's no way to filter for that, believe me.)

But the actual sale-- that is still totally under Mike's control, and he's going to do this VERY carefully, because he can't afford (I mean that literally) to blow the brand.

So, my advice is don't try to analyze too deeply, unlax and enjoy and roll with the curves.

pax / Ctein

[Mike Johnston]

Steve,
I'm thinking like a day or so? I don't want to get inundated. After all, there will be several chances to submit, so it won't actually be too critical. Miss one, wait for the next one. Miss all three, well then maybe you're not coming around to TOP often enough.... [g]

Mike

[beuler]

The first time I read Mike Johnston was on the Luminous Landscape site I don't recall how long ago. I'm about as regular a reader as anybody and it would be a very difficult task to find a TOP post that I have not read.

It is wonderful to note that even a blog has a life-cycle. Diving into that analogy I think maybe TOP has just graduated from college and is about to hit the mean streets to grapple with a future career full of huge opportunity and potential. Pitfalls and stonewalls will be there as well.

Here´s hoping for a huge success on these Printmaker sales.

[Geoff Wittig]

I can hardly wait for the chance to contend. I must confess that I spent some time yesterday looking through my work to see what might be competitive. I almost immediately realized that the images I love may only appeal to me. I'll definitely have to pull my wife in; she's always been a much better judge of which of my photographs appeal to other folks.

[Tyler Westcott]

Thank you for doing this! I think it is absolutely brilliant.

I see countless JPEGs online, and even though I am happily shooting 4x5 film, few of mine ever make it as far as a finished print. I find I rarely even have the opportunity to SEE a finished print, even though I think it's the ultimate point in the photographic process (not an online JPEG). It's refreshing to see an emphasis on printmaking, and I can't wait to see what emerges. I suspect it will be great.

[Dave Van de Mark]

Great proposal Mike, I'll be participating. My iPF8000 printer is already panting heavily!

[Keith I.]

I have a few I'd love to submit if I had any clue on the printing phase. I do get mine printed, because a print is so much better than an LCD screen, but am not able to do it well myself.

If anyone has any suggestions for some better places or people who I can have print items for me, I am all ears (or eyes in this case). I like my current online printers, but would love to see some done right on top notch papers.

[Richard E.]

For the lucky person selected, what print size will he/she need to print? Shall the prints be mounted? Framed? I'm asking because this could be way out of my league if larger paper sizes or gallery-mounted prints are required.

[John D]

To facilitate the voting be on the merits of the various images, I suggest you redact the names of the photographers.

I find the idea of blind-voting to be interesting. After the "winners" are announced, it would be interesting to see who was who.

[Clive Evans]

Great idea mike, equal opportunity for all, even me!

[Rico Ramirez]

I started a personal printing project earlier this year. The plan was to fill a 48 page portfolio with 35mm full frame photos printed on 11" x 14" paper but I only found 15 or less photos that I liked. Can't wait for the contest.

[Ed Richards]

Sounds like fun! I am not sure about my taste, but I do have the courage and a thick skin.:-)

[Paul Glover]

Sounds fantastic to me!

I'm guessing since you used them for "Color Picture" that Digital Silver Imaging would be acceptable in the unlikely event of my getting that far in the selection process? I don't yet have a darkroom or decent inkjet printer, nor do I expect I'll have either one any time soon.

I admit though it would be interesting to see what someone like Ctein could do with my humble work.

[alfredo]

sorry for correcting you, but... nota bene, Mike, not "note" bene

[Koert]

Great plan!
I love to see what you select even if I probably don't have the money to buy a print should I happen to like one....

Just on the off chance I might be brave enough to enter a photo of my own: Any problems with non-US people participating?

[Del]

I'm a little late to the party, having withheld my initial uncertainty in light of the alternative voting landslide that was taking place. Now that I see it presented as it has been, I find that I'm really looking forward to it. At the same time I'm wondering if you will be inundated beyond the capacity of a single human being. Should be interesting. I purchased a copy of Migrant Mother and look forward to supporting this effort as well.

[John Gillooly]

I think this is a great idea.....looking forward to taking part!

[James]

I think this is a great idea. I'm looking forward to seeing the selected pictures.

[Ricardo Cordeiro]

I feel excited by this and I'm not even considering submitting photos.

I would like to but I'm still organizing and re-processing my photos to finally have my website working before the end of the year. I'm planning on printing my whole portfolio too, maybe then I can evaluate the best prints and gain some printing experience (yes I'm a new-generation digital-publishing photographer :)

I'm really looking foward to this, based on the quality of what I read in TOP I expect to see trully excellent work and, if I'm not mistaken, this will be a big landmark in TOP history.

[Patrick Dodds]

Great idea Mike - I look forward to seeing how this pans out. Thanks for sorting it out.

[Ed Wolpov]

Is there a particular print size that you'll want?

[Mike Johnston]

Koert,
I have to say I haven't thought through all the details yet. Sort of working it through as I go. I assume we'll have to discuss the particulars and make the decisions when the time comes.

Mike

[Tom]

I wonder what your John's Root Beer image would look like printed on something like Polar Pearl Metallic....

[Roberto S.]

Hi Mike, when you wrote that this search is open for everyone, did you mean worldwide everyone? By the way, what size of print are you looking for? Or what sizes are allowed?

[Aakin]

I would like to know more about Ctein's offer to be the printer for those of us without our own printing capabilites.

[Mel]

I agree with Tim - what a great challenge to improve my print-making skills! Thanks, Mike.

[Richard]

Its a great Idea and I think it will really work well for you. I am looking forward to entering some of my work.

[Christopher]

Mike,

This sounds wonderful in many ways, and I am very excited to see the results of this as well as possibly entering some of my own work.

Reading through this post reminded me of a few prints that I wish I would have taken the jump on. So I thought of another idea for a contest here in somewhat the same vane as this one.

How about a contest from the TOP print sale archive. Compile a list of the photographers that might be interested in re-listing their prints here and publish it as a voting poll. Then take the top 3 or so prints and offer them as a re-release to all the people that missed them the first time around.

I don't know how realistic this type of contest would be, but I thought I would voice it in the off chance that it would happen, and "Precipitation" would be chosen as a winner, so that I could finally add it to my collection.

Cheers

[Bambang Indrayoto]

I am starting to look at my picture folder in my blackberry.

[Emanuele]

Hi Mike, long-time lurker here. I live in Italy and I hope to be able to participate. I print myself the shots. You say a thick skin is needed, well I think that an HONEST word, even if rude, is always a gain. Lookin' forward for the rules. ;-) Ciao!

[Timprov]

This question may not be really on topic, but I'm curious: how good of an indicator is a good commercial print for what's going to make a good artisan print?

[Tom Burke]

Mike: thanks for this invitation, which I think is a good one.

I'd like to ask a question or two about the whole 'print' thing. Once upon time, in a galaxy far away.... well, about 15 years or more ago, I used to make black & white prints with an enlarger under the stairs. A small number of these prints got framed and hung around the house, but most just ended up in a stack of prints. I used to get them out and look at them about once a year.

Since the advent of digital I've printed very few images; anything for display goes on-line. I think my reason for this is that it's difficult for me to see the arguments in favour of buying the requisite high-end printer and learning how to drive it properly (ctein's articles have tended to confirm my view on the difficulty of this), but only using it half-a-dozen times a year; and then not doing anything with the prints.

So I'd like to turn the question round, if I may, and ask you: how much do you print? And what do you do with all the printed images once they're made?

[Frank]

Did you mention how large the print must be? I have a good print, but it cannot be larger then 30cm wide .

[Siegfried]

Dear Mike,
That's an excellent idea and I love a lot, but I'm curious if you'll be able to keep TOP being the same as we all (readers) used to like it. I mean to say I'm not quite sure if I'll still be here should you turn it to some fleabay with occasional 'open Mike' and sporadic Ctein/Ken Tanaka posts. That's a bit exaggerated assumption, but I believe you understand the anxiety that I'm about.

Sincerely,
Zig

[Thomas Arne Strand]

Great idea.

[Farhiz Karanjawala]

I got round to printing some of my images when I read, quite possibly on this site, about the probability of certain digital disasters wiping out years of imagemaking. Now then, to have a chance to send one of those prints off to TOP isn't that cool or what?

[Dennis Ng]

As Tim said, it is the idea that is already very stimulating.

BTW, is that Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" print still on offer. Like to have a sample. Or, is it a kind of joke for the unaware?

[c. lund]

*hits F5 key*

[Renaud]

Having one's own work custom printed by no less than Ctein is one hell of a carrot, possibly more than the possibility of making a sale. I gave up printing when my first photo printer died a while ago, but I will definitely submit a picture.
This may be a problem though, since non-printers like me likely outnumber the master printers, for whom this was originally intended. You may have to split this offer in two.

[Perla Copernik]

Fantastic idea!, I love to print my own work! and very frustrated with those biased contests.

[Mike Johnston]

Siegfried,
As the post indicates, we've been holding print sales since 2006. The blog itself started in November 2005.

Mike

[Mike Johnston]

Dennis,
No joke, although my print was just a reproduction, like one you would buy in a museum shop. It was a digital print made from the scan of the negative, not an optical print made from the negative itself (which is a national treasure and isn't even used by the L.o.C.'s own printmakers).

Mike

[Andrew Kirk]

Mike, if the image is a "vertical", should the submitted jpeg be 800 pixies tall, rahter than 800 wide? This is gonna be fun!

[Alberto Castro]

Mike,

This is a fantastic idea! I have a couple of photos that might cut it, so I will give it a try, but given that there are so many good photographers around I think it will be hard to get selected. However, just thinking how to improve my current prints would be worth it.

It will also be nice to see what the other people send, I am looking forward to this.

Thanks again.

Alberto

PS: @Andrew 800 pixels on the longest dimension would be my guess, otherwise it makes little sense.

[ctein]

Dear Aakin & Renaud,

Here's what I normally do in the way of custom printing for people, and it should answer a lot of the logistical questions:

http://ctein.com/customprinting.htm

For something like this, I THINK I can come up with a flat print price that beats my duplicate print prices. That is, for prints 11 x 14 and smaller, I can keep it down to $20-$25 apiece. Maybe even less if the volume is really large (over 100 prints), but I don't know (Mike and I do have a test project in the works, so I hope to have better data well before this sale happens). Probably, anything above that up to 17" x 22", I can do for $40, again maybe less in really large volumes, and again, this is a guess.

Now there's a whole bunch of qualifiers on that. For 8" x 10" and smaller prints I can probably hit those price points regardless of what paper you want me to print on. Above that, shipping costs and medium costs start to become relevant. I mean, there are papers out there that cost $5 a sheet for 11 x 14 size. I can't afford to sell prints at $20 if $5 of that comes right off for the paper alone. I'd charge for the cost of the paper if you're not liking my standard paper (which could add several bucks apiece to prints).

Similarly, international shipping is pricey. So, I'd likely charge for shipping prints outside the US (which would still add less than a buck to the price of each print unless the volumes were very low).

When all is said and done, given the usual selling prices in TOP sales, I would expect the printing cost for the artist to be between 20 and 30% of their selling price.

Again, let me say that this is all very tentative. There's lots of details that haven't been worked out and ideas that haven't been tested. (In particular, I'm not sure what to do with Mike's entirely sensible requirement that the final stage of voting will require submitters to provide a final print. I need to come up with a price policy about that, something that I can live with and contributors can live with.) But you've got the idea.

pax \ Ctein
[ Please excuse any word-salad. MacSpeech in training! ]
======================================
-- Ctein's Online Gallery http://ctein.com 
-- Digital Restorations http://photo-repair.com 
======================================

[Mike Johnston]

"PS: @Andrew 800 pixels on the longest dimension would be my guess, otherwise it makes little sense."

Nope, 800 pixels WIDE. Said wide, meant wide....

Mike

[Alberto Castro]

Stand corrected :)

-Alberto

[Mike Johnston]

Alberto,
It's just the blog software template. It only accepts 800-pixel-wide pictures. Doesn't seem to discriminate between the shapes of the pictures. If you upload a larger image, the blog software will automatically reduce it to 800 px wide, but dedicated software usually does a better job, so I usually resize all larger images to 800 px wide before uploading.

Mike

[David Nicol]

"Nope, 800 pixels WIDE. Said wide, meant wide...."

Huge long vertical panoramics it is then! :D

[Shotslot]

How exciting! I won't submit Mike, I wish I could, but I'm really looking forward to the competition, genius idea sir! Good luck with the details.