Re: Price Range for User Manual

[Elna Tymes <etymes -at- LTS -dot- COM>]

I'll respond here with what I sent Matt, since others appear to be
interested in the subject.

Matthew J Long wrote:

> I have heard that most people bid their freelance contracts by the job
> rather than by the hour.

It is NOT true.  Most new companies want you to bid it that way, but
most seasoned contractors know better than to bid it that way.  The
reason is that what it is that's to be documented rarely stays in the
same form very long, and you usually have to adjust the docs on the fly
while trying to meet a deadline.  You simply CANNOT predict up front
what changes the client is going to make and how that's going to affect
the docs, and anybody who says they can is asking for a dunking.

We rarely bid fixed price.  What we usually do is estimate how long it
will take us to complete a project, based on what we know, and make it
clear that we charge by the hour, and then quote them the per hour
rate(s). Based on that, we ESTIMATE that it will cost $XXX to do their
manual of approximately yyy pages.  However, we also tell them in the
contract that our estimate was based on zzz information and the
assumption that all parties will meet the deadlines in the schedule we
attach, and that if these assumptions change, our estimate will also
change.  Dr. Joann Hackos, in her book "Managing Your Documentation,"
gives some estimates on p. 190, including 5 hrs/finished page for a user
guide.  That's probably accurate.

Elna Tymes
Los Trancos Systems

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