What Technical Writing for Broadcasters Costs and What Moves the Price

Why documentation is priced by effort, not by page

People often ask what a manual costs per page. It is an understandable question, but it rarely helps, because a page describing a single fader layout takes far less work than a page explaining how a gallery recovers from a lost talkback feed. What we actually charge for is the time it takes to understand your setup, write about it accurately and check the result with the people who run it.

Most of that time is not typing. It goes on sitting in the gallery or reading your existing notes, asking why a particular workaround exists, and confirming that the signal path on paper matches the one on the rack. A short document about a complicated system can cost more than a long one about a tidy system.

So when you request a quotation, we ask about the system and the audience first, and the length second. The length follows from those two answers.

The main things that drive the quote

Four factors do most of the work in a quotation. The first is the number of distinct systems or workflows covered: a single studio with one gallery is a smaller job than a facility with a studio, an outside broadcast kit and a remote contribution path. The second is how much material already exists and how reliable it is.

The third is the audience. A guide for experienced vision mixer operators can assume a lot, while an induction manual for freelancers who have never seen your building must explain much more. The fourth is the number of review rounds, since every round involves your crew reading, correcting and sometimes disagreeing with one another.

None of these is unusual, and none is a penalty. They simply describe how much careful work the document needs before a crew can trust it on a live day.

• Number of systems, studios or workflows covered
• Quality and age of existing notes and drawings
• Experience level of the people who will read it
• Number of review rounds with your crew

Manuals, run sheets and internal notes cost different amounts

The three document types we write most often behave differently when it comes to cost. An operating manual is the largest piece: it needs accurate descriptions of equipment, normal procedures and fault handling, and it usually has to be checked against the real system more than once.

A run sheet is shorter but denser. It has to work under pressure, so every line is trimmed, ordered by what the crew needs at each moment, and tested by reading it against a rehearsal or a previous show. The effort is in the editing, not the volume.

Internal documentation, such as patching records, naming conventions or handover notes, sits in between. It is often the cheapest to commission and the most useful to keep current, because small, accurate documents are easier to maintain than a single large one nobody dares to touch.

What you can do to keep the scope sensible

There is a good deal a client can do that makes the work faster and the quote smaller. Gather whatever already exists, even if it is out of date: old signal flow drawings, a crew WhatsApp-style list of tips printed out, a patch sheet pinned by the rack. Rough material is still a starting point.

Decide who the document is for and what it must let that person do. A sentence such as new freelancers should be able to set up the studio for a standard rehearsal without help gives us a test to write against and a clear place to stop.

Name one person on your side who can answer questions and approve drafts. Documents that wait for several people to agree on every line take longer and cost more, because the writing is repeatedly reopened. A single point of contact keeps the schedule tight.

• Collect existing drawings, patch lists and notes
• Write one sentence describing the reader and the task
• Nominate a single reviewer for approvals

How quoting and payment work

The process is straightforward. You send an enquiry through the contact page describing the system, the document types you have in mind and when you would like to have them. We reply with questions if anything is unclear, then send a written quotation that states what is included, how many review rounds it covers and what would change the figure.

Once you confirm the quotation in writing, we begin. An invoice follows and is paid by bank transfer. Nothing is bought on the website itself, and nothing starts until you have agreed the scope.

If the work turns out larger than described, for example because a second studio is added midway, we tell you before continuing and issue a revised quotation. Cancellations and refunds follow the payment and refunds policy, which is published on the site and applies to every service.

Where the price goes down, and where it should not

There are honest ways to reduce a quotation. Narrowing the scope to the systems your crew actually struggles with, accepting a plainer layout, or supplying clean source drawings all remove hours of work. Splitting a large manual into stages also helps, since you can start with the part that causes most confusion.

There are also places where cutting costs more later. Skipping the check against the live system is the clearest example: a manual that has never been tested against the rack tends to contain small errors, and small errors are exactly what a crew finds at the worst moment.

We would rather write a shorter document that is correct than a longer one that looks complete. If a request seems to ask for the second kind, we say so in the quotation and suggest an alternative.