If I was offered money to create a suite, I'd snap at the chance, although the buyer wouldn't be entitled to sell the suite unless a prior agreement had been legally arranged.
And I pretty much doubt any skinner would agree to that, considering that they could just as easily sell the skins themselves, make way more than 300 bucks and cut out the middle-man who is getting all your profits, and doing absoloutely no work.

Ah my friends, it's not quite that straight forward. By that logic, there'd be no such things as publishers.

I agree $300 would be a bit on the low end but the question is, how much money do you (or any skinner) think they could make selling a stand along skin? Let's say you tried to sell a stand alone skin at $5 apiece. You'd have to sell 60 copies to get to $300, 100 copies to get to $500. That's a lot of copies to sell. I know it doesn't sound like a lot but if you knew the sales stats on most shareware, most of it sells <1000 in its LIFETIME.

So if Microsoft or some other publisher came to you and said, "I'll give you $500 for a skin for us to include in a product we're going to sell..." I'd say that's a pretty good deal.

Pixtudio has done very well but their $8 suites include a LOT of exceptional skins and are full suites, not individual skins.

Now, the other side, $40 for personal use, Joe? Here's a general calculation:

How many hours does it take to make a skin? Then ask yourself how much per hour do you want to charge? Let's say you consider skinning half-hobby half profession and charge $20 per hour and it takes you 25 hours to make the skin. That's $500. That would be a starting point if you want to commission someone to make you a skin. Now if you commission them to make 10 skins maybe you can get a bulk discount.

Frame of reference. I was recently offered an assignment to to a high profile single Windowblinds skin for an upcoming movie tie-in. The deal fell through due to a lack of lead time, but the job was to pay twice Frogboy's theoretical minimum starting point.

The purchase of 'exclusive rights' to a skin or suite of skins would be viable only if the fee covered, and justified the creation time...

When a client comes to me requesting a house design, he purchases the right of use of the drawing/design for the specific purpose of 'building the residence'. I still own full and clear title, even though the client's payment has covered the entire creation time. I still am entitled to sell the design to a third party....but the client isn't. His 'purchase' of the drawing is quite limited and specific....and all this makes interesting comparisons with the concept of skin 'purchase', and the 'rights of the purchaser'....

Peff...that'll get you a backyard Dunny...

Agreed, I would never do an "exclusive rights" deal. The client would get a license to use it instead.

Hypothetically speaking ofcourse.

Brad, I agree with what you say. If I had been giving the chance to somehow have my skins published, and make money in return, then I'd be willing to obviously have the publisher get a cut of the profits.(After all, they're doing all the distribution work)

My response was in that, as I read Joe's post, someone (Any Mr/Mrs Averge) could pay you to create a suite, then they would go sell it, and make money themselves.(not publish it, but resell it), and they make a quick buck, probably more than they'd paid to have the suite commissioned in the first place.

In general though, most commissioned skins/suites usually are given away by company as part of a promotion, or as used as some form of advertising. Alexandrie's Ford skin, for example, would have been a promo tool. Obviously I'm just taking a guess here, but I doubt Ford sold copies of that off.(But hey, I could very well be wrong, I'm only guessing)

paxx
In my branch people buy the work and wait to resell them when the artist is dead.

"The Dead Skinners Society"

There are and have been similar programs for various versions of MacOS. The latest is called Duality (no, not the film) - see http://conundrumsoft.com/ for more information. WB is not likely to appear on the mac platforms.

And , of course, we can't forget ye olde Kaleidoscope for themeing the Mac:
http://www.kaleidoscope.net