The best way to pay designers?

Heres the problem:
Ive got a printer that prints straight onto artists canvas at sizes upto 1200mmx 2400mm (thats 4ft x 8ft) Ive been selling my own prints as well as some other designers. Its working well, but what i want to do is get a catalogue together and at the moment i only have about 8 of my own designs and 4 from some other designers.
Sooo.. the plan is to con some other designers into letting me put there designs in the catalogue, the only thing is what would be the best way to offer to pay them, eg. a commission on every print of theres that sells or would i have to but the design straight out from them, or pay them an hourly rate to design something for me.

Personally I think to start with the comission would be best for me as well as them because it means i can spend more on advertising to start with which would hopefully mean more sales which means more commission for the designer... the only problem i can see with this is getting them to trust me with how many of theirs i am actually selling.

What are your thoughts?

All good thoughts. If you're a 'popular' company, people will flock to you with designs just for a piece of the immortality. When you're starting up, it's tougher. Another thing I've noticed that's kewl is some sites selling prints on canvas will also stretch them onto a frame for a fee--nice added touch.

I'm assuming your ecommerce site is up and running, if not having that done will be key to getting artists to submit to you. I like the idea of the commission thing personally; gives them a long term vested interest. Another idea is to offer them a canvas print of their work as immediate payment for their work (don't know what your cost would be on this), and then commissions off sales. I'm just spit-ballin' here. Another approach to help with the launch might be to have a contest. Get some software companies to donate stuff as prizes, tell them all pieces selected as finalists will have their work offered for sale on the site and they will recieve commissions from all sales--have them click-off on a right to use contract when they submit. Then have people vote online for a winner (and reciepient of the swag).

Sounds like a neat venture--you'll be the 'threadless' of canvas prints. Good luck!

now thats an idea, a free print with every accepted piece. So you think i would have people interested in this. and also how much much commission do you think they would want eg. 10percent.
Just trying to work out whether i am going to be able to sell these at a reasonable price.

I'd say 10% sounds about right.

And this is a great idea, good luck.

Nos.

I don't know about royalties on art. For a writer, 8-10% is typically fair.

It seems low to me, but then again, I don't know anything about this stuff. If you give them 10%, what would you get from these? You print, distribute, but you didn't create the artwork, so to know if 10% would be fair, I'd have to know how much you get from them.

o.k this is just an estimate at this stage we havent worked out any prices yet, but basically
for an unmounted print 1800mm x 1200mm (thats pretty big) i need to charge the purchaser at least $200 australian dollars to make it worth while and on top of that the commission for the designer.
So what you have to remember that all the designer has to design is make the design once, then sit back and hope that i am not full of crap or that their design is one that sells.

I on the other hand have to pay rent on an industrial premises, pay employees to print, dispatch, administrate, market and sell the products, as an ongoing venture, as i dont have time to do this all myself as i have my sign business to run.

If I had to charge any more because of designers wanting higher fees, i dont think i would sell enough to make it a viable business, I see it like this, they have an opportunity to make a long term investment for just the one or two designs, they would produce in a relatively short period of time.

I also know for a fact that most designers would have designs just sitting there doing nothing that would be good enough to sell to the public as wall hangings so why not just make a little bit of extra cash out of them. All prints will have the designers name on them if they wish but no web addresses, or phone numbers etc.

I think one of the biggest problems im having is that a lot of designers think that their art is worth thousands and thousands of dollars, this is simply not true. The average person just wont pay that much just to decorate thier home or office.

I think you're on track, LAV. It would prolly help you if more of our 'artsy' guys posted their opinions, instead of a graphic guy like myself.

What I think your artists have to understand is that they're not selling an original artwork, they're selling you, the distributor, the rights to resell a digital print. If you were a gallery selling an original oil painting, the ratio would be flip-flopped. You would be making a sales commision then--but in this case you are 'publishing' the reprint and paying the artist a royalty.

Make sure you have an attorney draft a contract for you to have artists sign to give you the rights to print their works.