Worth the Money?
Though predictions for future income from guidebook royalties are difficult and rarely accurate, projecting income from a flat fee is much easier, and is absolutely necessary.
Even
if you're offered royalties, read the rest
of this essay to help you predict the success
or failure of your project.
The payment offered to you by a publisher is
based on the publisher's calculations,
and assures that the publisher will make a profit. You
must do your own calculations to assure
that you make a profit as well. If you don't,
you'll have no one to blame but yourself when,
at the end, the reader and the publisher are
happy and you're disappointed, disillusioned,
burned out and broke.
Since they will be estimates, it's important
to make these calculations as accurate as
possible, and to allow a healthy margin
for error. Remember: if you fudge these figures,
you're only cheating yourself.
In order to be accurate, you must follow several
basic business practices:
2. Estimating Project Expenses
4. Writing a New First Edition
6.
How Not to Lose Your Shirt
Tracking Time & Expenses
(a) Track your time. Keep
a timesheet (to half-hour, or preferably
quarter-hour accuracy) as you work on
any guidebook project. Use a paper sheet
or time-tracking software. This is tedious
but absolutely essential, and after awhile it
becomes second nature. If you don't know
how long it takes you to write or revise
a page or chapter of guidebook text,
you cannot possibly predict how long
it will take to write or revise future
books.
(b) Track your travel expenses accurately. You
probably already do this for your income tax
return(s).
(c) Track your annual overhead: the
expenses for your home office, computer, stationery,
telecommunications and postage, health and
disability insurance, and retirement savings.
You probably already do this for your income
tax return(s).
Estimating Project Expenses
When discussing a guidebook proposal with the
publisher, you must agree on the manuscript deadline,
the estimated length of the book, number
of maps, photos, appendices, etc.,
and of course the fee. Once you know
what the publisher expects from the project,
you can calculate your own interest in it.
(a) Draw up detailed, day-by-day itineraries of
the fieldwork to be done. Allow time for rainy
days, illness, rest breaks, transportation strikes,
unexpected discoveries, holiday closings, etc. Be
realistic! Do not under any circumstances
assume a minimum-time, best-case scenario.
(b) Estimate the time required
for writing (as distinct from research/fieldwork).
This is where your timesheets are essential.
Base your estimate on past work. You can figure
actual hours per page, or the number of weeks
required to complete a chapter of so many pages.
Consider not just the number of hours or days,
but the length of time over which those hours
or days are normally spread. Don't plan a straight
succession of eight- or ten-hour writing days
from now until the deadline. You won't, and
can't, and shouldn't work that hard. Indeed,
for many writers, a day on which you write—just
write—for five hours is a very good day;
the rest of the day is spent answering phone
calls and mail, reading proofs, looking for
new projects, etc. On some days, no writing
gets done.
Allow for illness, vacation, filing your taxes,
short but lucrative rush projects, conferences,
kids' birthdays, getting sick, falling in love,
moving house, car breakdowns, etc. To be safe,
do an accurate estimate of the time, then add
20% or 25% or even more for contingencies.
If
you don't have records of past work, you can
use either of the following rules-of-thumb
until you do:
Revising an existing guide: For a
complex, highly-detailed guidebook of 350
pages with 50 maps, plan 300 hours writing/revising/correcting
time (not including fieldwork) over a six-month
period from contract signing to deadline.
Writing a first edition: A guidebook writer
with some experience may be able to crank out
an average of one book page per calendar
day during the period from contract signing
to deadline; an experienced writer working under
very favorable conditions (deep knowledge of
the destination, few distractions, saintly spouse,
etc) may average two book pages per day. Of course,
on many days you may exceed these figures;
this is the average for the length of
the project. This includes writing and drawing
maps, etc., but it does not include field
research, which is additional time. It does
not include editors' queries, and correction
of text and map proofs, which come after
deadline, and which may add 4% to 6% more time
to the project. So if you're writing a 350-page
book, a comfortable deadline would be around one
year (350 days) after signing the contract.
If you figure three book pages per day of brand-new
writing in your estimate, you're probably setting
yourself up for disappointment.
So, if you've been asked to write a new, detailed
350-page guide for a major publisher (Frommer's,
Fodor, Lonely Planet, Moon, —any detailed
guide with maps), you must figure this way:
| Writing days | 175
to 350 (1-2 pages finished
per calendar day) |
|
| Fieldwork (travel) days | 60 |
|
| Total | 235
to 410 days |
For this exercise, let's estimate 323 days from
contract signing to deadline.
Calculating Profitability
Once you have these estimates and figures, you can
calculate the project's profitability with some
accuracy:
Item |
Amount |
Sub-Total |
Cumulative |
| Proposed fee | $30,000 |
$30,000.00 |
|
Travel Expenses |
|||
| Transport | -$1,800 |
||
| Lodging | -1000 |
||
| Meals | -550 |
||
| Incidentals | -350 |
||
| Total Travel Expenses | -$3700.00 |
$26,300.00 |
|
Annual Overhead |
|||
| Home Office | -2000 |
||
| Insurance | -2000 |
||
| Retirement | -4500 |
||
-8500.00 |
|||
88.5% (323 days) of Overhead |
-$7522.50 |
$18,777.50 |
|
| Net fee (before taxes) | $18,777.50 |
||
| Income tax (25%) | -$4694.38 |
$14,083.12 |
|
| Self-employmt tax (15.3%) | -$2872.96 |
$11,210.16 |
|
| Net fee (after taxes) | $11,210.16 |
Net
Fee Breakdown... |
Before
taxes |
After taxes |
| Net fee per week (46 wks) | $408.21 |
$243.70 |
| Net fee per workday (5 days/wk) | $81.64 |
$48.74 |
| Net fee per hour (8-hr day) | $10.21 |
$6.09 |
How Not to Lose Your Shirt
The net fee per week/workday/hour is the money you have left from the project to pay the rent or mortgage on the rest of your house (that part which is not your office), buy and run your car, buy groceries, clothing and other necessities for you and your family; take a vacation, pay for your children's education, buy gifts for birthdays and holidays, purchase a new TV set or stereo or bicycle or tennis racket....
So how does $30,000 for a 350-page book look now?
The publisher is making money. The reader is delighted with your book. So who's unhappy? Does this prove that guidebook work is not worth it?
Not at all!
It shows that this particular deal is not worth it, unless you think your expertise and abilities are only slightly greater in value than those of a person making the minimum wage. With a fee of $45,000, this project looks more serious, and at $55,000, it starts looking pretty good. At $75,000, you're getting into quite good money.
"But the publisher is not willing to pay more than $30,000 for this project," you say. So what?! That doesn't make it viable for the writer.
Show your calculations to the publisher. Redo the calculations using figures which do make the project viable for you. If the publisher rejects them and won't budge from the original fee, walk away! Find a project which will pay you decently.
"But someone's going to take on the project," you say. Yes, probably so. They will take it, and they will find out the hard way—too late—what you found out in good time.
If you're locked into a contract that requires you to lose money subsidizing the publisher, you'll be sorry. You won't have the time to find work that really does pay you well.
You want to find your future, not pay for your past.
