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Voiceover Advice -Rates


willowroamva

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Hi, hopefully I’m asking this in the correct thread.

I was wondering if anyone has advice for what a typical rate is for doing audiobook VoiceOver…
I was offered a project of 45,000 words for ~$250. I really feel that is a huge project size for not a lot of money.
If anyone has thoughts I’d appreciate it. I’ve never done such a large project before. (hope it’s alright that I post regarding this).

thanks!

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Interesting question, but not one easily answered. VO isn’t my area, either, so I I’ll have to give general advice.

Research.
Yeah, I know it’s a pain, but it’s the best offer I can give. It’s actually not too difficult, just time consuming. Use those keywords “audio-book voice-over” and run a few searches. Pop open a spread-sheet and make some categories: new sellers, level ones, level twos, level threes; subcategories based on your opinion of their ability based on their samples; make a note of the number of reviews and the score; lastly, their prices for various word-counts. You don’t have to go crazy with a sample size, but I would say around 15 of each seller level.

Next is harder: self evaluation and being honest about your own skill and most importantly figuring out where you fall in that gathered data.

You have reviews, fortunately, so you’re not starting with nothing.

Edit:
(I just realized I misread your question as: “I’m thinking of making an audio-book gig and want to know how I should price it.” Oops. 😜

I’m hoping one of the other VOs in the forums can answer your question on the project price.)

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As a fellow VO talent, I would break down an audiobook like this. A 45,000 word project would be about 4.5 hours of finished audio (based on 10,000 words being roughly an hour). If you are responsible for recording, editing, QA and mastering, it takes the average vo talent 6-8 hours to fully produce 1 hour of finished audio. That means a 4.5 hour book could take anywhere between 27-36 hours of work to fully produce. Let’s say your fast and the work only takes you 25 hours to do. After Fiverr’s 20% commission off a $250 order of which you’ll earn $200, your hourly rate for the project would be $8/hr.

So I think it really boils down to how efficient a vo talent’s process is and how much they value their time. That being said, you should be able to use the above formula to counter offer a rate you think is fair, if you’re so inclined to accept the project.

This is just my take on audiobook pricing, but hopefully it helps in some small way!

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