Photos for book...what to charge?

I have recently been asked to shoot 25-30 photos for a book. It will be a guidebook for a National Park. The assigment will require me to travel4-5 hours each way to get to the park, plus will be spending the night in the park for 2-3 days at a time. I am hoping to complete the assigment in two trips.

I have no idea what to charge! I have only done a few paid assignments, a wedding, engagement, senior pictures, and have two weddings booked for next summer. I have never done anything of this sort before. Do I charge a base amount per image? Do I just set a flat fee for the whole assigment. Do I charge a lesser fee, and then take a small percentage of the profits from the book?

Keep in mind this is for a family friend.

Thank you for your help!
David

Look at what your overhead costs would be just to do the assignment, then tack on a profit you want to make. Since the book will be sold for profit that into account as well. Its very hard to give proper advice on what to charge, every person kind of figures out their own method.

Take a look at this link for a better idea: http://www.photographe​rsindex.com/price-ed-calc.htm

Tony_Stark wrote in post #15169381
Look at what your overhead costs would be just to do the assignment, then tack on a profit you want to make. Since the book will be sold for profit that into account as well. Its very hard to give proper advice on what to charge, every person kind of figures out their own method.

Take a look at this link for a better idea: http://www.photographe​rsindex.com/price-ed-calc.htm

Thanks for the link. Definitely useful, however they that an image for 1/2 page, in a low volume book would be on average $3000. I will be taking 35-40 photos, or about $12000 dollars! Obviously the amount on the page is for a single image, and discounts would be given for bulk, but this still seems very high to me.

I figure my expenses will be approximately $500 to travel. Also, keep in mind that this is for a friend who is doing this independently, so it is not for a major book publisher or anything.

I was thinking of possibly charging $2000 plus 5% of gross profit....any thoughts??

davidmtml wrote in post #15179064
Thanks for the link. Definitely useful, however they that an image for 1/2 page, in a low volume book would be on average $3000. I will be taking 35-40 photos, or about $12000 dollars! Obviously the amount on the page is for a single image, and discounts would be given for bulk, but this still seems very high to me.

I figure my expenses will be approximately $500 to travel. Also, keep in mind that this is for a friend who is doing this independently, so it is not for a major book publisher or anything.

I was thinking of possibly charging $2000 plus 5% of gross profit....any thoughts??

If you break that down, it would be about $50 a photo ($2000 for 40 images). I would say either lower the overall cost of the photos and charge for gross profit, or just sell the images. In most cases I would think it would be a hard sell to get both. Also take into account how many books they would be making and how many they expect to sell. Just my 2 cents on this. Hopefully others with more experience can weigh in.

How about $1000 plus 5%? Sorry, I know this is just a shot in the dark, but I just have never done anything remotely like this before. Thank you for your help!