This might not be the most appropriate group to post this question but
here's my two cents.  When you make an 8x10 in your home darkroom you've
got something under a dollar for paper and for the sake of argument
about the same for chemicals which you will pour out shortly whether
completely used up or not.  So lets day it takes you three tries to make
one perfect print, you have a maximum of $4.00 in that 8x10 (not
counting your labor but hey this is a hobby, right?). This isn't a
machine made quickie but a burned and dodged print with correction and
either conventional or electronic retouching.

O.K. now you're Larry's Lab, Inc., you need to mark that print up to
cover cost of paper and chemicals, depreciation on equipment (or call it
replacement cost), space rental, fixed expenses, staff, labor and
shipping and then add something for the government and your own
retirement.  Let's say that $4.00 "custom" print costs the studio
$12.00.  Remember this isn't a machine made quickie but a burned and
dodged print with correction and either conventional or electronic
retouching.

Now you're Sam's Studio, ltd.  You receive this print, the customer put
half down when he placed the order, but when they got back from their
honeymoon they had overspent and they took several extra months to pick
up and pay for their order:  you need to price this print to cover your
fixed expenses and overhead, the staff that you hired to cover the
phones and place the order (small studio?  it might be the same guy that
shot the wedding but if you're there you should be getting paid or find
another line of work!!), not to mention payments to the lab (usually net
10 days or at best net 30--they got their money long before you got
yours--that deposit is long ago spent), payments on the building,
interest on your debt at the bank, the government's cut, the accountant,
the bookkeeper, Social Security for employees, Workmen's Compensation
Insurance for employees, your quarterly estimated Income Tax payments to
the IRS, something for the your time and HOPEFULLY something left for
your retirement.

There's a lot of difference between the Walmart studio portrait and the
product of a portrait studio or wedding photographer, or there should
be, photographers that don't know how to price usually end up as a
Walmart Cashier.

Some of them just get tired of justifying their prices and end up as
clerks, anyway.  It may not seem like it from the outside but the most
competitive and worst paid section of the professional photographers
trade is in the local "Mom and Pop" portrait/wedding studio.  You work
evenings, weekends and holidays (shooting seniors, weddings and
reunions) and never have a (good) day off.  You might net $25,000 a year
after all is said and done (my wife is a lab technician and makes twice
that and isn't expected to buy her own supplies and equipment).

Oh yeah and I forgot all about heath insurance for small business
owners, better hope your wife/husband works somewhere with a good health
plan or pray you never get sick.

darkroommike

Oh yeah, that $40 8x10?  A little high for an album print in my neck of
the woods (there you have volume and prints are usually very good
machine made rather than custom.)  Cheap for a wall print, but most
studios really want to sell you a larger print since the custom
finishing for an 8x10 costs almost the same as it does for a much larger
print.

This is one area I beat the competition by a large margin -I am also not
afraid to point out how superior my work is in this aspect.

Now that I can produce in house retouched work which quote unquote
archival I am happy like a pig in mud.

I do my own
printing-optically and digitally, I charge 16.50 for color and B&W Rc
prints "currently" but will be raising all prices after the 1st of the
year. Forty is fair if one is paying a custom lab. Not if mini jiffy lab
is printing them and charging 2 for one prices. If the customer can't
tell the difference then so be it.