Dealing with the unreasonable

With blood pressure soaring and temper fraying, I'm using this little forum to vent my frustrations. It's my blog and I'll whine if I want to.

Today's rant focuses on the unreasonable expectations of people who want to hire freelance writers and editors. Hey, I know budgets are tight, but that doesn't mean we write or edit for free. People who write/edit for free are called volunteers. Following are some solicitations I came across this morning. Egad.

Each of these--trust me, I didn't have to look hard to find them--expects a great deal of work and skill. But let's break 'em down.

1. 28,000-word manuscript: This one will require at least 56 hours to write the rough draft. Then there's editing, formatting, and a cover blurb. So, let's add in six (6) more hours for editing and another hour for the cover blurb. We're up to 63 hours of work to be provided for the measly and insulting payment of $100 or $0.63 an hour. And the buyer wants all this completed within three days.
2. Edit 22 pages: If we assume a count of 300 words per page, that's 6,600 words. At a low editing rate of $5 per 1,000 or partial thousand words, the fee for this job would be $35 with an approximate time expenditure of about two hours. The buyer is offering $10, or $5 per hour.
3. Pre-teen trilogy: Each book in this trilogy is supposed to be 20,000 words, which will require a minimum of 40 solid hours of writing just to crank out the rough draft in seven days. Since no rough draft is worthy of publication, the writer will have to edit and, probably, format the document, which will take another four (4) hours. Formatting isn't mentioned, so why offer it? The buyer is offering $50 for each of the books in the trilogy, which translates to $0.88 per hour. That's a better offer than project #1.
4. Digital product e-book: The buyer left the budget open, which indicates he's looking for the lowest bid offer. He wants up to 80 pages of content researched and written and ready for publication within a week. If we assume standard manuscript page format with a maximum average count of 300 words per page, we come up with 24,000 words of content, which will take 48 hours of work. Let's add another five (5) hours for thorough research and another five (5) hours for editing. We're up to 58 hours to be performed on a "low budget" and he wants all this done in seven (7) days.

I'ts my guess that none of these buyers would work for those rates, yet they expect freelancers to leap at their offensive and insulting offers.

And people wonder why I'm cranky.