Sunday, June 21, 2020

Blogtour: Focus by Holly Bargo

Focus

by Holly Bargo

Genre: Romance

Professional photographer Dana Secrest has a secret and doesn’t even know it. When she storms from her best friend’s home on Christmas Eve-not the wisest decision she’s ever made - security contractor Sam Galdicar follows her to save her from her own hot temper and impulsive action. Upon arriving home, Dana discovers her apartment has been ransacked. Then an attempt is made on her life. She doesn’t know who’s trying to kill her or why, but Sam is determined to protect the woman whose eyes don’t need a camera to see the truth.

This enemies-to-lovers, billionaire romance contains some explicit content that may be unsuitable for readers under 18 years old.

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Calculating Value

By Holly Bargo

Anyone who’s been a freelance writer or editor for more than 10 minutes knows that far too many people undervalue (or completely devalue) the skill, time, and effort required to produce well-written content. It’s hard work, folks.

Writing for Pay

Go to any freelance platform (e.g., Upwork, Fiverr, Guru, etc.) and you’ll find solicitations and bid requests for writers to produce “error-free” work with “perfect grammar” for poverty wages. Sure, being offered $125 to produce 15,000 words might not sound all that bad, until you break it down.

Research shows that it takes approximately 3 hours and 20 minutes for the average writer to draft, review, self-edit, and revise 1,000 words of content. That’s an average. You may produce good content faster or slower; however, it’s useful for calculating per-hour wages.

Using that average, let’s calculate how much time that 15,000-word novella will take. For mathematical ease (because math is not my forte), I’ll use 3 hours and 15 minutes, or 3.25 hours, as my average time to produce 1,000 words of polished content. Here’s the calculation (15 [units of 1,000 words] 3.25 hours = 48.75 hours). That 15,000-word novella will take 48.75 hours to produce.

The typical, full-time work week is 40 hours. That $125 fee works out to a wage of $2.56 per hour ($125 48.75 hours = $2.56 per word).

Now, let’s deduct the platform’s 20% commission, which leaves you with 80% of the fee paid. (Oh, forgot that, didn’t you?) Instead of being paid $125 for that 15,000-word novella, you’ll be paid $100 ($125 80% = $100). That, of course, reduces your hourly wage on this project to $2.05 per hour ($100 48.57 hours = $2.05 per hour).

Would you work for that?

We can break down the fee on a per-word basis. For that 15,000-word novella, you’d be paid $0.008 per word before the platform skims its commission from the fee. After the commission is deducted, you’d earn $0.006 per word. In either case, that’s less than one penny per word.

Again, would you work for that?

I won’t.

Whether a freelance writer charges by the word or by the hour, knowing how to calculate the value of time, skill, and effort leads to ignoring or turning down a host of projects with unreasonable deadlines and insulting budgets.

The Cost of Editing

Now that we’ve established a range of acceptable value for freelance writers, take note of professional editing fees. Refer to those same sources. These rates surprise authors, especially indie authors new to publishing. Like writing, editing requires sophisticated skills and expertise that have value.

Editing speed varies greatly depending upon the quality of the written content, the editor’s skill, and the type of editing performed. One article written by an editor “guesstimated” an average editing speed of 1,500 words per hour as a reasonable baseline to calculate fees. Use the same simple math to figure freelance writing rates to figure freelance editing rates.

For instance, if you’ve got a 50,000-word manuscript to be edited, expect the editor to work 33.3 hours on the manuscript (50,000 words 1,500 words/hour = 33.3 hours). Offering a professional editor $100 to edit the manuscript values his time, skill, and effort at $3.00 per hour or $0.002 per word.

Quite frankly, I won’t work for that and neither should anyone else.

Facing Reality

Somewhere I saw statistics showing that fewer than 10% of authors (even less for self-published authors) earn more than $1,000 per year in royalties off books sold. With over 1 million new titles published each year, competition for readers and their money is fierce. Producing one full-length novel to professional standards often means operating in the red. To be blunt: you’re not going to recoup your investment.

Offering lowball fees for skilled work devalues the service you’re trying to hire. Accepting low-bid fees for your skilled work devalues the service you provide. Understand the value of the work and uphold it. That may mean saving up for months or years to hire a professional editor or ghostwriter.

To determine whether your valuation of service coincides with industry standards for professionals, check the Editorial Freelance Association and The Balance and ClearVoice. Such sources offer professional freelance writing and editing rates in ranges, with the lower ranges for beginning vendors and the higher rates commanded by experienced, expert professionals.

Holly Bargo never outgrew a love of fairy tales, legends, and myths. Or horses. However, one foot must remain firmly planted in the real world where Holly makes her living as a freelance writer and editor. She and her husband have two grown children and live on a southwest Ohio hobby farm with a menagerie indoor and outdoor animals.

Holly enjoys hearing from readers and other authors and may be contacted via the Hen House Publishing website: www.henhousepublishing.com.

When she's not working on other people's documents or reading, Holly finds time to transfer the voices in her head to paper ... er ... computer. If she doesn't, there's a definite possibility her mind will explode.

And for those who might wonder from where the pseudonym of Holly Bargo came, it's quite simple really. Horses. Namely an elegant and temperamental Appaloosa mare who has long since crossed the Rainbow Bridge and is fondly remembered for guarding toddler children and crushing a brand-new pager.

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