R300.00 per hour (exc. Publishing)
Or
R0.70 per word (exc. Publishing)
Capturing your own or a loved one’s life story is a beautiful gift for the whole family. If someone special has a significant birthday coming up, considering roping in the whole family to split the cost as a grandparent or parent’s life story is something that will be treasured for generations to come.
Estimating the cost
The transcription from audio to text takes three hours and up to four hours per one hour of recorded interview time. The entire process, from start to finish, can take in the region of between 60-120 hours for a 50-150 page book.
An average 100-page book (with 600 words on a page) would be in the region of 60 000 words i.e. 60 000 x R0.70 = R42000. This will give you a good idea of the financial outlay in terms of actually writing your book. As a bare minimum you would need to budget R20 000 to R50 000 for a completed 30 000 – 70 000 word manuscript. Please remember every life story is different, yours could be shorter than this, or it could be longer.
Please communicate with me if you need your book completed by a specific date to ensure we are both clear on any deadlines as I am usually not immediately available to start the process. If long-distance travel is required (outside of Gauteng), this will be quoted for separately.
I will invoice you in advance for the first thirty hours’ work, and then bill for every subsequent twenty hours, based on your budget. This will give you full control over the amount of work that is being done at any one time, and ensure that you keep within your budgeted amount. Apart from the initial deposit for the first 30 hours, I will always bill in arrears, and after each billing cycle, the completed work will be submitted to you electronically or uploaded to a shared Dropbox folder, which will ensure that you always have the most up to date version of your book. Further work will commence upon payment of the previous twenty-hour billing cycle.