(no subject)

[serene]

1) Mom is back in the hospital. No details yet. Argh.

2) Migraine is finally just a reminiscent buzz. Yay.

3) I got an email from a publisher I've never worked for (it is a legit publisher). They're doing a survey of what rates freelance copyeditors and proofreaders charge. No idea how they got my name. What do you think? Would you respond?

Comments

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

"If you have work to offer me, or if you would like to consider me as a regular freelancer, I'd be glad to share my rates with you."

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

That's my inclination (well, actually, my inclination is to ignore it, and the email actually says, in what I find to be a paternalistic way, "If you do not wish to participate in this survey, just ignore the email.") I freely share what I make with other workers -- it's a political act, and one I'm quite attached to -- but I've never felt like I wanted to do that with employers. I was wondering if there was something subtle I was missing, but if you don't think so, then I feel fine about ignoring it or responding as you suggest.

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

As a freelancer in another line of work, I agree with Debbie. If you respond at all, that would be the response I'd give.

freelance rates

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

why? i mean, why is this, or should it be, a secret?

this annoyed me greatly when i started out as a freelancer because it was really difficult to find anyone who would talk about it, and consequently i had a really lousy idea what i should be charging and was insecure about whether i was pricing myself out of the market, or (more likely) was seriously undercutting it.

since it annoyed me so much i've always been open about it later (it's right on our website).

Re: freelance rates

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

I will talk about it with other workers. In fact, I talk about what I make with my co-workers as a matter of principle, too, even in offices where that's prohibited.

Maybe this is just peculiar to me, or to freelance editing, but while I can say what I've made on recent jobs (see my response to dawnd), I can't say what my "going rate for editing" is, because that question isn't really specific enough.

The thing about giving a potential employer my "going rate" is that it's deceptive -- that mightn't be what I'd charge to work for *them*, on their current project. That might not be what I'll charge if they come to me in six months. If they say "I'm considering hiring you; what do you charge?" I need to know what the project entails, and how involved it is. Not just how much time it will take, but how much I will hate the work (or love it), because that affects how much I want for the work, or how little I'm willing to settle for to do it.

Also, in this specific case, it feels like an odd brand of spam -- I don't know these people, and there's no indication they're actually interested in my work, but they want me to take however long it will take to fill out a 20-question survey to help *them* decide if they're getting gouged on their copyediting contracts. I don't know. It just feels odd.

would you tell me?

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

As I am currently doing some volunteer freelance copy editing and proof reading, I'd love to know what rates people charge for that. It would be nice to have some ballpark in estimating what my time is worth, should the issue of compensation ever come up.

And feel free to decline this request. ;^)

Re: would you tell me?

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm happy to share. I get a range of pay, as is probably usual. Here are five of my most recent jobs and what I got paid to do them (all in US dollars):

1) Permissions editing for Big Book Publisher: $50/hour

2) Transmittal assistance (that is, pre-production check on things like accuracy of art and captions, etc.) for Big Book Publisher: $40/hr

3) Conversion of documents from PDF to text files, and proofreading the result for Major University: $40/hr

4) Fact-checking for Big Book Publisher: $50/hr plus expenses

5) Writing sales brochures and editing web content for Small Service Company: $40/hr for the editing; $55/hr for the writing (they passed on my offer to give them a flat fee for the job, but the brochures would have cost them approximately $700 each to write from scratch)

Re: would you tell me?

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

By the way, when I consulted with a friend (who may pipe up here, or may not) who does editing work, and sometimes throws me some extra, she gave me a range that is lower than what I charge now, because what I did was start with that range (which if I recall was more like $25-40), then when my clients would tell me how cheap that was and that I should raise my rates, I kept raising my rates until people stopped saying that. :-) However, I don't raise my rates for existing clients with the same work for me, since the lower rate is still enough to live on if I get enough work. Some of my longstanding clients have given me raises of their own volition, however.

Re: would you tell me?

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the information! It sounds like you are doing excellent work, and that people are valuing it appropriately.

[bitty.livejournal.com]

3) I got an email from a publisher I've never worked for (it is a legit publisher). They're doing a survey of what rates freelance copyeditors and proofreaders charge. No idea how they got my name. What do you think? Would you respond?

No idea, but if you find out what they find to be the going rate, I'd love to know. Am I above average? below? dead on?

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

I'm not intending to answer them. My current rates are in a reply to dawnd, above.

[bastette-joyce.livejournal.com]

I used to participate on an email list for women in web design and development. The list had an iron-clad rule that we were absolutely not to discuss our rates on the list. The listowner was afraid she would be charged with an anti-trust violation - fixing prices, etc. Some people laughed at this and said that small-time freelancers like ourselves were not who those laws were designed to keep in line. But my feeling was that it would be the small-timers they'd go after, because they could.

I don't know what bearing this has on your question, since your situation is totally different. But reading the discussion in the comments, I get the idea that this kind of issue has come up for other people. This might be one reason for the secrecy.

[cassidyrose.livejournal.com]

My understanding of the anti-trust law is that it is the employers who cannot legally discuss, with other employers, what they pay people and/or set rates. I have not heard of the law applying to free-lance employees (I could be wrong, but it is unfamiliar to me). I worked as a compensation analyst for a while and they way employers get around the law is they submit their pay ranges for certain jobs to a third party who aggregates the data from a number of employers and gives it back to them. So, it is legal for employers to see it like that, but it is illegal for company A to say to company B "Hey, what do you pay your engineers?" or "Let's decide on a rate for engineers."

[firecat]

1. [hugs]
2. [hugs]
3. I wouldn't respond because my rates vary so wildly depending on what kind of work I'm doing.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Thanks!!

Mine do, too, in theory, though my last several jobs have all been in the $40-50 range. It would be hard to say what's "typical", but that's typical for the past several months. (Besides which, I'm not always paid by the hour. Sometimes it's by the project or by the month or by the page, as it seems appropriate.)