Authors' Amends Charges?

Jackcat

New Member
Hiya

A couple of questions from a newbie if I may:

Can anyone point me in the direction of a guide - on-line or printed - to setting charges/hourly rates for design (for print) and authors amends?

Is it standard to have a minimum charge of say 15 mins time (or longer?) for processing authors amends? How would you explain the rationale for this to a client who has taken to giving us just a few amends at a time, lots (and lots!) of times, on a single project, editing as he goes, and expecting us to do them all free of charge, and on-the-spot, on the grounds that "it only takes a few seconds of your time each time, so you can't justify charging me 15 mins each time!" I sort of see where he's coming from, but his started after we pointed out to him that on his last project he spent more on authors' amends than on the original design and artworking! We're in-house so can't refuse to work for him, and it's a high profile publication, but we have to recover our running costs too, and also have a duty to spend our organisation's money wisely.

We have another client who wants us to quote all inclusive, including processing all authors amends, but won't specify how many we might have to make. Any advice on how to handle this?

TIA

Jackcat
 
You could quote a price that includes a set number of amends, and specify that there will be a charge if the client goes over that number of amends.
 
For the client you mentioned could you just negotiate with them in terms of time scales. If they want it done straight away for each amend then it's a 15 min minimum charge, but if they can wait until they have 3 or 4 sets of amends in then you wouldn't have to charge as much. If you make it clear it is in their interest to send amends in a group/ round then it should help.

It can be difficult to change other peoples working habits but I don't bill for anything less than 30mins for amends as by the time you swap over from what your doing, amend, send across etc it's not just the actual amendment time.
 
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