I need your opinion on how much to charge..

[yamille]

Hi Ladies,

 

While I am in grad school and doing my internship I am taking on odd jobs here and there.

My friend hooked me up with this guy who needed someone to transcribe a book that his friend wrote on a typewriter to a regular word document. I googled rates for something like this and got$1.50-$2 per page.

 

I decided on $1.50pp and was told that he needed the first 3 chapters by thurs. This was on a Friday night so that's less than a week which was fine. Then he leaves me a voicemail asking me to make any grammatical changes because he sees lots of mistakes and he will be showing those first 3 chapters to an agent in LA. At first I was thinking sure no big deal but the thing is a disaster. There are so many mistakes and it's taking me a lot longer.

FI says that now that is copy editing not transcribing what's on the page. Additionally he requested those chapters for Tues (2 days ago) Since I am still working on the rest of it- it's about 300 pages- how much would you charge? $1.50 doesn't seem like enough....

[becks]

Copy editing is a whole lot more costly than transcribing. - plus you don't want to have him mad at you for missing something.

 

Personally, I would write exactly what he has on the page, then send it back to him for editing. Then make the changes to the word doc you already prepped and charge him the same $1.50 per page, again.

[yamille]

That was my thought. I don't feel right editing it as I go becuase I can't just type- I would need to read for content. Thanks Rebecca

[Hartyt509]

Yeah I'd do the same he's taking the piss. Over here its a lot more than what you are charging per page

[yamille]

Harty every time I read one of your posts I smile. I realized that he was "takin the piss" and spoke to him. We re negotiated. I'm happy with it now. thanks girls!

[Martha]

I am a little late on this, but I just got an email back from the Chair of our Graduate Studies secretary that types up the thesis' for us grad students on her own time....Anyhow, she charges $3 per page and $3.50 per page if they have tables and charts. I think that is expensive, but apparently she proofreads for us too.

[Maura]

i copyedit professionally (have 2 journalism degrees bach & masters, and a bach in english too) and charge $25/hour to friends and when i was in grad school. i dont charge by the page because i dont feel that fairly reflects the amount of work im going to do - i.e. when i have a client who requires me to do a ton of corrections because they write poorly, i sometimes spend an entire hour on one page. my time is valuable, and worth much more than $3.50 a page, IMHO. now that i have been out of school for a couple years, i charge more.

[yamille]

Thanks Maura. If I was a professional copy-editor I would DEFINATELY charge more. I was thranscribing really. Gramatically this thing is a disaster and on top of that there is so much use of slang because it is a gang story. We figured it out but thanks for your input. He gave be a flat rate that I am happy with for the first 3 chapters which he wanted me to transcribe as well as edit. Having said that- he knew that I am not a prof. copyeditor. thanks for the input though!