The Handmade Seller’s Manual

The hardest thing to price is the thing you enjoy making.

Makers undercharge for a specific reason: the hours do not feel like work, so they do not get counted. Then the materials go up, the commission takes a cut, the postage is absorbed, and a good month leaves nothing behind.

This manual writes the workshop down. Costing a piece, pricing your hours, materials and waste, batching, studio routine, markets, wholesale, commissions, packing and the weekly look at the numbers are each set out as a procedure.

It contains nothing about how to make anything. It assumes the making is yours and the arithmetic has never been done honestly.

Inside, you will learn how to

• Cost a piece with your own hours counted at a real rate
• Batch so the setup time stops eating the margin
• Decide whether wholesale is worth it at your price
• Take a commission without it running away from you
• Work out what a market stall actually has to take to be worth it
• Read the four numbers that tell you whether the season paid