I've been offered a job writing a book of 30,000 words - background for a role-playing game. The ad quoted $0.75 a word.

Admittedly, I'm a total klutz when it comes to math, but to me, this means 75 cents a word, and works out to $22,500, but the employer says it's only $225. Who's right, and what did I do wrong?

Thanks for any help.

Look at it this way. If you were to be paid $1 per word, you would get $30,000. But you are getting only ¾ of that dollar, so your $22,500 is correct, What I suspect is that there is a typo somewhere (assuming your vision is OK). I think the ad should read either 0.75¢ (which gives you the figure you got, $225) or 7.5¢ a word, or $2250. Seven and one-half cents a word seems to be a reasonable rate for 30,000 words. (But maybe not; read below.)

Some possibly helpful information from Wikpedia -

A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. While there is some disagreement of what length defines a novella, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000.[1]

Occasionally, longer works are referred to as novellas, with some academics positing 100,000 words as the novella‒novel threshold. However, since this figure extrapolates to about 500 pages, such an interpretation would only be made by someone who believes that no literary work of less than 500 pages can rightly be called a novel. Conversely, an interpretation of a novella as being 10,000 words or longer means a limit of about 50 pages, which is far more commonly thought of as short-story territory. A better set of parameters is this: 1-99 pages/short story. 100-199 pages (or approximately 20,000-40,000 words)/novella. 200 or more pages/novel. This difficulty in defining the empirical parameters of the novella genre is indicative of its shifting and diverse nature as an art form.

Thirty thousand words is over 150 pages (I think), and that is going into novel length. If the employer wants to pay you only $225, I'd pass, unless you really need the money. Even if you do need it, you are setting your price fairly low for this employer, should he ever want more work from you.

Price per word averages

$0.75 per word sounds like what Hemingway might get! IMHO.

That was helpful. Thank you, Frank.

But dorian, doesn't $0.75 mean seventy-five cents per word? How can $0.75 a word be less than 7.5 cents per word? For $2250 I would do the work.

I consulted my sister, who has been a bookkeeper for 50 years, and she told me this:

"...they meant to say 7-1/2 cents per word, or .075."

This seems to me to be correct.

quote:

But dorian, doesn't $0.75 mean seventy-five cents per word? How can $0.75 a word be less than 7.5 cents per word?

Yes, it does. That's why I suggested a typo. I remember established SF writers getting a couple of cents a word about 60 years ago.