Are you doing this as a side-line to a regular, full-income job? Are you trying to earn your living entirely from engraving?
How much do you need to bring in for an hour's work to support yourself?
You can charge by any method that you and your client agree to. Some people charge by the frame (a frame being a single measure in a single staff, Finale can count them for any file for you), others charge by the item (a note is an item, an articulation is an item, a lyric word is an item), others charge by the page, others charge by the hour.
But no matter how you charge, it all begins with: How much do you need/want to earn per hour to survive? If you are truly self-employed then you know how expensive health insurance is, so be sure to include all your insurance expenses in your calculations.
Add up how much you have to spend for a year: mortgage or rent of your home, rent of your office if you work outside your home, all your insurances (health, homeowners, auto, personal liability, whatever), how much you need to pay for clothing for yourself and your family, how much you spend on food, how much you spend on car costs (gas, maintenance, tires, car loan), how much you want to put into the bank for a rainy-day savings account, how much you want to put into the bank for your retirement, how much discretionary money you want to have to spend each week, school costs for your children, whatever expenses and savings you need money for each year.
Then divide that by 48 (to get how much you need to bring in each week, which gives you 4 weeks paid vacation). Then divide that weekly amount by 40 to get the hourly rate you need to bring in to survive. Pretty scary, isn't it?
Once you know your hourly rate, you can break that into whatever format you want to satisfy your client. Let's say you feel you need to bring in 50 Euros/hour to make the income you want/need. Then figure out how much time you need to spend to complete a single manuscript page of a typical score of the type of music you are most likely to work on and multiply that time amount by 50 and that is your charge per manuscript score-page. Then calculate the number of frames on that page, and divide your per-page rate by that number and you have your charge per frame. Again, calculate the number of items on that page and divide your per-page rate by that number and you have your per-item charge.
That gives you four rates you can use in your contracts: hourly, per-page, per-frame, and per-item.
You can also visit www.npcimaging.com and follow the link to the directory of engravers and go to their home-pages and find out how much they charge and see if your rates are within the ball-park of others.
You will probably find some who charge way below what you need and others who charge way above what you need.
Don't lower your rates just to compete with less-expensive engravers -- it does you no good to do the work if you aren't earning what you need to in order to maintain your lifestyle. And don't raise your rates just because others are charging more -- you have no idea how much work they are getting.
And you probably wanted a simple answer like 20Euros/page. :-)
David H. Bailey
d. collins wrote:
Can anyone give me an idea of how much one can charge for engraving and how one charges (by the page? the hour?)? A publisher for whom I'm doing other work asked me how much I would charge if he used pieces I've already done, and if I did more. I suppose it depends also on the type of music. I'm speaking of baroque vocal music, for one or several voices and continuo.
Thanks, and apologies if this is not a question one should ask.
Dennis
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-- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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