Hi Ronald,
Whether you charge for the document or not is a matter between you and the
organisation that has asked for the document, but you shouldn't avoid charging
just because working out a pricing structure is too difficult!
To expand a bit on what George has already said, the way I'm currently charging
for independent projects is to set an hourly rate, estimate (with reasonable
accuracy these days) how long the job will take (in hours), and then add cost
of materials. I set the hourly rate a little higher than I need, which account
for overheads, e.g. electricity, wear and tear on the embosser, Duxbury
upgrades and so on.
For example, 100 pages = 50 sheets, at $0.04 per sheet = $2. Plus binding,
shipping and handling – although shipping and handling could maybe go via free
matter for the blind? So the document will probably only cost you $5 or so to
produce.
But it might take you 10-12 hours to transcribe the document and those are
hours you'll never get back. You could charge, say, $40 an hour, which is $480
labour plus the $5 on consumables = $485. Out of that $485 you could spend
maybe $200 on a Duxbury upgrade, and set aside $20 for a new box of braille
paper, so you effectively take home $265 for the work.
If that sounds like too much or too little, adjust the rates as you see fit.
It's also worth saying that charging doesn't have to be all or nothing. I do a
little bit of transcription for a charity in the UK who have, in the past,
purchased lots of braille and technical equipment for me. Even now they keep my
licenses up-to-date. For this particular charity, I don't charge an hourly rate
as a way of giving back to them, but I do charge for consumables.
Good luck!
Matthew
-----Original Message-----
From: duxuser-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:duxuser-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of Ronald Grigg
Sent: 22 November 2018 03:29
To: duxuser@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [duxuser] How to price out embossing project
Hello, I have been asked to prepare some braille document.
It will be approximately 100 pages of braille. They wanted to be in 8.computer
braille. There will also be a few pages of graphics to and boss.
How do I go about setting a price for this. Or, should I just do it and not
building anything?
Thanks, ronald.
PS I’m dictating this and for some reason dictation is not working very good
tonight. I know there’s a few dictation errors.
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