Price per word???

Steven Smith · **Voice Talent** Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 3

Can someone please enlighten us on how much should a voice talent be asking as a general rate per word? Most ads show a general budget or range of same, but a few want us to name our price per word.

Recently I responded to such an ad. I have no idea what to charge and just put down a price. I do not want to be undercutting myself, nor do I want to be overpriced out of the market.

Any input is appreciated. I'm having a great time with this.

Thanks

Steven R. Smith

Philip Banks · **Voice Talent** Joined: 23 Jun 2003 Posts: 404

Honest answer is don't do it! Work out the minimum fee for which you are prepared to do a session and stick to it. Minimum session fee should cover up to one hour of your time.

To encourage people with bigger jobs it's worth coming up with a discounted 1/2 day rate and one day rate. A "per word rate" would be fine if the client wanted you to read it it "per word" i.e one word at a time but they seldom do.

Deby Cedars · **Voice Talent** Joined: 23 Jan 2006 Posts: 1482

You know that is good advice if your talking about a commercial. What about a romance novel? I have no idea how long it will take me to do a romance novel. I could give them a daily rate, but then when they ask me how many days it will take I really don't know.

Philip Banks · **Voice Talent** Joined: 23 Jun 2003 Posts: 404

Read two pages of the novel and time yourself. Multiply the time you took by 3 to allow for editing and re-takes if you are doing the whole job yourself and then divide by 2 to get your page average time then multiply by the number of pages in the book. Divide the minute total by sixty to get the hours then apply your rate per hour/half day/day.

For example

2 pages = 8 minutes
8 mins x 3 = 24 mins
24 mins divided by 2 = 12 mins
12 x 258 page book = 3096 mins
3096 divided by 60 = 51.6 hours
$N per hour x 51.6 = $FEE

For a job of that size it would be worth rounding down to make it a working week and charging 5 days at your daily rate. Some charge a lower rate per hour when they are editing, sounds fine until you turn down a $300 session fee because you're busy doing $25 per hour editing.