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What should I charge to edit an audio book?
What should I charge to edit a 100,000 audio book? It’s 9 hours of finished audio, so as much as 18 hours of raw audio. The employer is a colleague of mine (who recorded it) on behalf of his client – he basically doesn’t have time to edit it and is passing the job over to me.
I’m a professional producer but have not edited an audio book before – I’m unsure about whether to charge by the hour or for the whole project. My initial calculation was $5000. Any suggestions? Your thoughts would be appreciated, Cheers 🙂
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12 Replies
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Just bringing back 18 hours to 9 hours?
Are there log notes where the breaks are?
If so, i can do this in one day.
If not, it will take me two days. (I can listen at 2x speed).
What is the work after that, setting chapter points etc?5000 seems a lot to me. But if all needs ambient sounds / sound design to get into the mood of the story, it’s pretty low.
But why not ask your client what he expects to be fair, and see if you are willing to do it for the money.
Bouke
https://www.videotoolshed.com/
smart tools for video pros -
What is a “100,000” audio book? I would bid the job at an hourly rate of at least $60 an hour with a 15 hour minimum. So if you complete the job in 10 hours you’ll still get $900. The devil is in the details.
Eric
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What is a “100,000” audio book? I would bid the job at an hourly rate of at least $60 an hour with a 15 hour minimum. So if you complete the job in 10 hours you’ll still get $900. The devil is in the details.
Eric
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Yes, cutting it down to 9 hrs would probably only take me a day or two. What I imagine will be time consuming is editing the intrusive breaths, making it flow, checking against the script to ensure its accurate and adding room tone in the places where the breaths have been cut. Thanks for your advice though, i might just end up asking him what’s a fair price.
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*100 000 words* , cheers for the advice.
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well, last time i’ve worked on something similar, breath / mouth noises were accepted (and of course avoided during recording as good as possible).
Also, recording was done with punch in on a timeline, picking it up after a break / mistake so the end project was very closed to a finished piece.
So indeed, just contact the client and just have a nice chat of what he expects.
Bouke
https://www.videotoolshed.com/
smart tools for video pros -
P.S. You never ask the client what they think is a fair price. You tell them what rate you expect to be paid.
Eric
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Definitely bid an hourly rate- otherwise you end up slowly losing your shirt as something that was supposed to take a day drags on for weeks.
Noah
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Perhaps in your world.
In my world it is quite common.(as i also sometimes ask my clients what they want to pay after a long job. You probably don’t do this, but then again, how many customers do you have that do long jobs?)
Bouke
https://www.videotoolshed.com/
smart tools for video pros -
Quote: “Perhaps in your world. In my world it is quite common.(as i also sometimes ask my clients what they want to pay after a long job. You probably don’t do this, but then again, how many customers do you have that do long jobs?)
Bouke”
I find it very strange that you would ask your client how much they are willing to pay after the job is done. How do you handle the “$10” an hour answer? A long job for me is anything that takes more than 10 hrs and I always set the rate before hand. It’s just good business.
Eric
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