Fees

[curdles]

I need some more advice about working on this manuscript, please.

I'm meeting the client this week to go through a few things, one of which is the photos he wants placed in the book. He's given me a whole load of them but since I have no idea what or who they're of, I need him to label them (while he's with me). He's paying me a price for the job (divided into two stages), and I'm charging him per page for the extra pages he's adding. I'm regarding time spent together as part of the cost of the job, but I just know that he's going to give me the whole story behind each photo - instead of just writing something on a post-it note, so this could be a long job. So my question is should I charge for this sort of thing in a different way?

[gpuss]

It's always tricky for freelancers to come up with costs for such things, isn't it? You've got to assume a few things like phone calls and visits are included in the quoted price as they're all part of the job, but there does come a point where the client has (not necessarily will underhand intent) overstepped the mark, and a new bill needs to be presented.

Since you seem to have the job well under way, you have a few cards in your hand; should he decide to lob you aside and get someone else on the job, they would both be starting from scratch and the cost would all be on the client. I guess the thing to do is to let him know that whenever he suggests something that will take extra time, let him know that it will cost him x before he chooses whether or not to do it. I don't think you can charge retrospectively though, especially if he thinks the agreed price covers it.

Without knowing the agreement you had in detail, I can't really say whether this should be charged for differently.

[curdles]

To give you the background, I got this job through an appeal on a local forum. I saw it but put it aside for a couple of months before getting in touch with him to see if he was still looking for someone to do the job. It seems someone did start it but bunged it back after a couple of weeks, saying she was too busy to do it. By the time I responded, he was pretty desperate to find someone, so I'm certain he's not going to want to let me go.

I told him I could give him a price for typing up and editing but not, at that stage, for the rest of the work. So we agreed on a price for the first part of the job. (He was also well aware that I'd sold myself short; I wanted the job and thought I could claw some of it back later). While he said he didn't want me dropping out, he really was fantastically unaware of the amount of work he was asking to be done, but when I sent him a written agreement, breaking the work into two stages, I think he understood it wasn't going to be quick and easy and, I strongly suspect, he was a bit shaken. The written agreement also showed him I was serious.

So the agreement states a fee for typing up and editing based on 80,000 words - his approximation - and that for all subsequent additions he will be charged £9 per hour. That's stage 1.

Stage 2 is proofreading and project managing the self-publishing side. I should have included the words copy-editing, here, because the whole thing will need re-formatting by the time stage 1 is complete. I stated that I will be able to give him a price for proofreading when I know the final wordcount, and I will also give him a price for project management.

While I've given him a price for additional pages, it's the extras I'm not sure about - as I said, time spent talking about and labelling the photos, thinking up chapter headings (and probably the book's title), translating into dialect where necessary (cross-referencing needed here, though I am familiar with much of it) and, perhaps, writing a press release for the local papers. There's also quite a bit of fact checking but that's included the job price.

I have established a relationship with the client, and when we last met, he told me we won't fall out over money. I just hope we trust each other as much as we appear to. It's interesting that I now know so much about him (because I'm working on his life story) and I see how thoroughly shrewd he's been in business, but he's also a very nice bloke.

[Wacky]

You certainly have the stamina ...

[gpuss]

he really was fantastically unaware of the amount of work he was asking to be done

I'm with such a client at the moment. There does seem to be a notion that proofreading should take about the same amount of time as simply reading a book. But that's not the half of it. My person thinks I can also bring in creative analogies, headings, arguments and obscure facts, and that writing ten words of such material should take about ten seconds. We can consider clients relatively blameless for this until we have informed them otherwise, which is when they can start to be awkward. Your guy seems to be at least starting to grasp how long our work takes without the optional extras thrown in.