Q: One of my hi-tech clients I mentioned has become a regular, and I’ve been asked to offer a quote for writing a private placement memorandum (PPM) for a real estate partnership. The gig would be ongoing, with one PPM every quarter. The first PPM would be the toughest, and follow-ups much simpler as they’d use the first as a template. How would you quote a 25-70+ page document to be written with input from attorneys and the real estate partners?
The value of a typical real estate investment they’ll be pitching to investors is on the order of $30 million, so there’s no question I’m adding value. And they don’t want to pay their attorneys to do it at $400/hour! I’d appreciate any hints or help you can give. Thanks!
A: Bottom line, estimating is all about time. You just need to ask the questions to determine the parameters of any project and then break it down into the any background reading, research, meeting time, concepting, copywriting, and editing, and figure out how much time for each (background reading and research won’t apply in most cases), and them multiply by your hourly rate to get an estimate (which is fine delivered as a range to the client). There’s no “typical” price for any project out there because every project differs in scope. And as such, there’s no definitive source for pricing guidelines. Some like to refer to the pricing guide in The Writer’s Market, but in my experience, they offer such huge fee ranges within a given category as to render the info virtually meaningless.
As for how long a project should take, good luck finding any reference on that as well, for the same reason: there is no typical project. My advice is to find an experienced writer in your market, take him/her to lunch, pick their brains, and get some blanks filled in for yourself. That said, the best antidote for confusion is simply experience. You do enough projects, and you’ll get a sense of how long something should take. Hope that helps. And by the way, I discuss this on this on p. 68 of TWFW: Back For Seconds…