the Cost of Freelance Writers

I hired a professional freelance technical writer to write up a training manual for a new software program my company implemented. The finished product was about 150 pages long and included a quick-reference table of contents, screen shots, FAQ and an itemized index.

This was a great service and well worth the money. This writer was very, very thorough. He took the time to really get into the new software and understand it. The result was a really user friendly, use to use and understand guide. This would have taken me forever to write and there's no way I could have made it nearly as interesting. I was expecting a brief summary of the different functions and how to use them. I was not expecting some professional and thorough. The only complaint I have is that we were only given a hard copy of the manual and not a digital copy that we would be able to update. This was in his contract, so we knew it up front but as the software has been updated I wish we would have paid the extra fee to have complete editing rights to the work.

Make sure you know how much of the material you will retain, i.e. if you will get a digital copy and access to edit your copy or if you will be required to hire the writer at a later time to do the updating.