I do three or four books a month for friends and colleagues and I've only ever charged for materials, which everyone tells me is daft. Strangers are starting to ask now and I have no idea what a realistic number looks like, or whether repair work can ever be worth the hours it eats. What does it actually pay once you count the time honestly?
It pays, but not from the work you're describing. My pricing is a minimum charge that covers an hour of bench time and the fixed cost of taking a job on at all, then an hourly rate on top, and I quote a range with a written note that opening a book up sometimes reveals more work. The money in this trade sits in repeatable things — edition binding, portfolios and boxes, presentation work, and institutional contracts — not in one-off sentimental repairs, which are the slowest jobs and the ones where a single mistake costs you more than the fee. Take the repairs because they teach you and because you enjoy them, and price them so they aren't a loss.
The written note about opening the book is essential. Half my jobs contain something invisible from the outside — a previous repair with tape, a split that runs further than it appeared — and if you've quoted a flat number you eat those hours yourself.
I stopped taking commissions after two years and the reason wasn't money, it was that sentimental books arrive with sentimental expectations. A family bible where the customer hasn't quite accepted that the water damage is permanent is an emotional job as much as a technical one, and I could never work out how to price the four phone calls and the disappointment. I still bind constantly, just for myself and as gifts, and I enjoy it about ten times as much as I did when it had invoices attached.
I tracked twelve jobs with a stopwatch, which I recommend to anyone about to set prices. The average job took a little over double my estimate, mostly in stages I don't think of as work — waiting on the press, cleaning up, and the two conversations per job about what the customer wanted. My effective hourly at my original prices worked out embarrassingly below what I earn at my day job. I roughly doubled my prices, lost maybe a third of the enquiries, and made more money in less time, which is the most repeated lesson in every craft and I still had to learn it personally.
Minimum charge plus an hourly rate, quoted as a range. Time twelve jobs before you set the number. Repeatable work pays the bills, repairs pay you in skill.
@darning_dot · 7mo ago · 2 replies
Slight disagreement about where the money is. Everyone wants to do restoration and nobody wants to do the boring repeatable work, which is exactly why the boring work pays: blank journals in a house style, guest books, presentation folders, thesis and dissertation binding around exam season, and simple boxes. Those have known times and known materials, so you can quote instantly and you're not gambling. I subsidise the interesting repairs with a run of guest books every autumn and I'm much happier than when I was chasing restoration jobs.
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@levain_lorna · 7mo ago
Thesis season is genuinely a business by itself if you're near a university. Fixed format, fixed deadline, and the students have already accepted that it costs something.
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