At Queensberry we say our ideal clients are mid to high end photographers, and those who aspire to be. Oh, and we love it if you buy albums! So in our recent album pricing survey one of the questions we asked readers was, how many albums do you sell? Over half our respondents said less than ten a year. Ten albums a year doesn't seem a lot, so does that mean the world is ending for albums and the people who sell them? Not at all. Nothing's changed. Albums have always been a way of standing out from the crowd and up-selling. In the old days most photographers sold the negatives or a stack of prints. These days it’s shoot and burn. Same game, different bat. But we can learn a lot from people enjoying the most success, so I've been analysing the survey responses from people selling 20 albums or more per year... How FAIR is 100% markup on the wholesale cost of the ALBUM ONLY? How DIFFICULT is it to make 100% markup on the wholesale cost of the ALBUM ONLY? The >20 group seem much more assertive about how much they charge for albums. Nearly half said 100% markup was much too cheap, and almost as many said it was very easy to achieve. While I take that with a grain of salt (many are covering the cost of image editing and design services etc under their album markup) I’m still pretty sure these people are asking more for their albums - and obviously getting it. So how are they doing it? By being much more focused on albums in the sales process, rather than offering them as an added extra. More than half sell “packages” (ie offer the shoot, images, album and services as a single purchase), and almost all of the 21% "other" category also focus on albums, by offering optional packages, album credits and other incentives to buy. By comparison those selling less than ten albums a year are much more likely to offer an album as a separate purchase (39%) or only when asked (another 19%). So are the album activists suffering in today's market? Not really. In fact they're doing better overall than the respondents as a whole, with 80% reporting their wedding bookings as steady or improved. There was no noticeable difference between this particular group and all our respondents with respect to age, but rather more of them were men (63% versus 53% overall). They were also much more likely to describe themselves as high end (45% versus 15% of those selling less than ten albums a year). And it's no surprise that they're very confident they'll be selling albums into the future! How likely is it you will be selling albums in three years? No wonder we love you ;) Cheers, Ian