I am looking at adding albums to my portrait pricing - but I'm just in the first tentative steps of doing it. As I look to fitting it into my price list, I'm stuck figuring out how to figure out how to price an album.

I believe I have a reasonable system in place for determining my print prices to bring me a good profit. When I apply that same system to figuring out an album price, I come up with what seem to be very steep prices - hypothetically, let's say 40 images at my usual $40 an image (for 8x10 and smaller), that's $1600, and I haven't even figured in the cost of the album or the time designing it yet!

Then again, I'm aiming for a client who appreciates good photography and is willing to pay for it - maybe I need to charge what feels to me is a lot. I have no idea what the going rate for albums is right now.

Anyone wanna help me out? How do you go about calculating your album prices? Do you know what the highs and lows are for portrait albums right now (I'm not asking for your specific prices)? About the only thing I know is that the value of the album isn't so much in the wholesale cost, it's in my work and my time.

Anyway, thanks for any help you can give!

We price our albums this way:
Binding cost = $X
Per page cost = $X

We figured out our costs in binding and printing and a rough estimate for design time to come up with X for each album size we offer. We multiply our cost for each item by I believe about 5 (we did a lot of numbers using the PPA's recommended guidlines)

The price comes out pretty high, but then again so is our cost. We just did an album that cost us just in printing and binding right around $1000 and has taken about 15 hours to design, assemble, etc. It will sell at right around $5200.

When I figured out our first album cost and then price my first thought was "no one will pay that much" but when I saw the albums and realized how crappy our wedding photos were and remembered how much I wish I had an album from our wedding (but we don't and the photographer is MIA) I realized I would pay that much for an album so I could show my children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

But the binding and per page thing works for us and definitely count your costs!

15 hours!? Good night. You need to fix something there!

Pricing per image will be a nightmare. I do my 10x10 at $650 book fee and $65/page. Most albums come out around $5-7,000. I have 2-3 hours in design and my print/binding costs run around $5-700. You're right that most of your album pricing is in the time and care you take in the selecting of photos, the design itself, and your ability to put a book together that knocks their socks off.

The most important thing to remember is... YOU'RE NOT YOUR CLIENT. Don't base things on what feels like a lot to YOU, base them on what the value is that you're creating for THEM. It could be that your print pricing is reasonable to you, but is it priced right for the value you're creating for your clients?

$.02

I have two sizes of albums. 6X9 and 8X12. I charge a flat fee per page. $50 page for 6X9 and $60 per page for the 8X12. Each open spread is 2 pages. Or each side of the book is a page. We call the open book a spread. We have a 30 page minimum. Most books are 50 pages or more. We just did a 102 page book and am working on a 3 volume set with about 60 pages each.

If you are trying to figure out how to do the Books then I would insist if I could you get Gary Fongs DVD set. His method changed my business. Follow it and you will have most of your income from your books and it will out pace your print income by far. I don't like to figure things out on my own and have to go through the learning curve by making my own mistakes. Gary has it figured out for you and it works if you do it. Every time! It is up to you but I would go that way if I were you.

Good Luck. Story telling with wedding books is the best. You will expand the way you shoot.

I think this is an important point to keep in mind throughout, from session booking to final album. I know Kevin has based his entire business around the album, so listen to what he has to say.

We are just getting started with albums, and am not yet at the point to book higher-end clients that could spend those kinds of dollars. We are using the Willowbook and price it at $80 per 2 page spread + a binding charge for a 10x10 album.

Thanks for the response, everyone!

If I may ask, for those of you who price with a book fee or binding charge plus a per page charge, are you building a profit into that book fee, or is that purely to cover the cost of the book fee you pay? I assume that you are pricing the per page or per spread fee at the cost you pay plus the profit you want for that page or spread. Am I correct?



Kevin, I'm not entirely sure of what you're saying. I guess depending on the way you look at it, you could be suggesting that I might be undercharging or that I might be overcharging! Actually, my print pricing doesn't feel reasonable to me...then again, I am NOT my ideal client - I'm too much of a bargain hunter for my personal stuff! $40 for all prints 8x10 and smaller feels like a lot of money to me, and is higher than a lot of other, more established photographers in my area. Then again, I have clients who want to pay that. I think what you're saying is that I need to give the clients a high valued image and charge accordingly.

Does what I just typed make any sense?

hahah. Yeah! If you're not comfy with your price, just make sure you keep it relative to the value you're providing for your client. Don't look at it as just an 8x10 or a book.