Reimundo Garcia Jr.

I am sure many of you have heard of limited editions in one industry or another, whether it be for comic books, cars and even iPods. Limited editions are intended to make your product more valuable by assuring the buyer that not many copies of the product will be made. With most art, there is not much need to worry about limited editions because so much effort is put into producing each copy. Paintings, for instance, take a bit more effort to produce and are less likely to be labeled limited editions even though they are. However, other forms of easily reproducible art like photography are very easy to reproduce in the digital age.

After a year of selling my photography, I decided to make some prints limited editions. This allowed me to alter the price on certain prints and instill more value in my photography. You can label a particular print as a single edition if it is the same edited version of the same picture presented in the same way. So, an 11×14 version of a picture would be a different limited edition from the 18×24 version. Also, the black and white edit of a photo would be a different limited edition from the color version. In this way there are many ways to create new limited editions of the same photograph.

Having decided to produce limited editions, I asked a few photography friends for their advice on how large a number of limited editions I should create. Many said to start with very low limited edition numbers, such as 15 or 20 maximum. I wasn’t 100 percent sure about limiting my prints so narrowly, so I started with 50. Also, I decided I was only making certain sizes limited: the 18×24 matted prints and the 12×16 matted prints. Other sizes, which I had decided not to print anymore because they didn’t sell as well, were not labeled limited editions because I was selling them at a discount to enhance sales.

The most difficult part of using limited editions is keeping track of what numbers you have sold in the past. For instance, once you sell 1/50, the next print should be 2/50. It makes complete sense, especially if you are printing all 50 at once. But, in reality, I can’t afford to print them all at once and store them somewhere. That brings about the problem of keeping track of where you are in a photo’s limited edition per size, per edit and per presentation. You should definitely issue a paper receipt for all sales so that you have a written record of the limited edition. However, that still may make it difficult over time to know where you are without sifting through dozens of receipts. I saw that the problem needed a different solution and found some software called Flick that allowed me to track sales of all my photos as well as the limited edition runs. While Flick has its flaws, it has kept my limited editions on track.

Limited editions have been a bit tricky to manage but the payoff has been worth it. My newest photos are limited editions of 20 and 25, now that I have realized the benefits of low edition numbers. As many of my photography friends had advised me, start low. Now I know why.