Freelancers / HR / Managers help wanted: Charging for creating a training course

[HappyNewMum2Be]

Hi, I have been asked to quote for creating a training course (handouts, structure, presentation, examples) for a software package (well known). The company want to be able to reuse it and deliver it themselves, but as they are small, just don't have the time to write it.

What would you say is reasonable to charge, it would probably take 2 days or so to write, and I can work out my hourly rate for this, but I feel that it is a little like writing a book, they want essentially exclusive rights to the material and to reuse.

What are your thoughts? Have any of you commissioned courses before? How much have you paid? What rights would you expect?

Thanks for your help in advance.

It is a bit difficult for me to say how long the course would take to write because I don't have all the details but I would say that if you're writing a course from scratch it would take a minimum of three days. Have you written a training course before?

I wouldn't charge a hourly rate. Your rate should be on a daily or half daily rate, not hourly. I would charge about £350 per day.

HappyNewMum2Be I've racked my brains but I've never commissioned a training course for myself or someone else in house to deliver from an external source, and I have never created one myself on an external basis for someone else to deliver either.

So I can't help you at all with what premium if any you should put on it for signing over 'rights'.

If I were commissioning one in terms of rights, I'd expect rights to deliver in house, I'd expect there to be a restriction specified on not delivering it to any individuals outside my organisation and not allowing any other organisation use of it. I would expect rights to unlimited duplication of training materials for circulation internally only.

I would not expect exclusivity, that would be impossible really, and unnecessary, so I would expect you to retain the right to the material for use elsewhere. So I suppose from that point of view I wouldn't be happy if you wanted to put a premium on it for the 'rights'. If it's a training course for a well known software package, it's not reasonable or practical for them to have exclusive rights to the stuff, as that would basically mean you wouldn't be able to do a similar exercise for any other organisation.

I would expect that the organisation has asked for exclusive rights to the training course so that they can update it themselves. By doing this they don't need to pay you for additional costs at a later date. It sounds as if they only want a one-off payment for the course.

If it were me I'd give them full rights to amend and use as they see fit, but not exclusivity to the material, as I'd want to use it elsewhere/design similar for other companies.

Just my tuppence worth. I cannot help on pricing, but if the client is going to update your training and deliver it again, make it clear that it cannot use your logo/branding (e.g on slides, etc) when they deliver it in the updated format. You do not want to be associated with something that may no longer be right!

Excellent excellent point from Ribena as per, and the reason I am control freak and only do training I deliver myself.

The company you are quoting for wants to retain copyright on the work you would be doing for them.

There is nothing wrong with this per se, but you should expect to get a much larger fee for a written manual on which you do not retain copyright than one on which you do.

You should not be charging an hourly rate, but a piece work fee IMO.

Two days sounds very short indeed - are you factoring your existing knowledge base into the fee, or just estimating the number of hours it will take you to do the work (with no preparation)?

I have created training courses for a well known software package before. I then trained the other trainers and also presented many of the courses myself. The software (financial) is highly configurable and customisable, so a lot of the material wouldn't be reproduceable for other organisations, although sections of the text could be (and have been by me) re-used with some tweaking and different screen shots.

The organisation I produced it for never once mentioned wanting 'rights' over it. I left them with editable soft copies of the material though, as over time they will inevitably tweak/upgrade the software, and will want the material to reflect the up to date status.

I was contracting (mostly configuring and customising the software) for the company at the time, and simply charged them my daily rate for the time taken to produce it.

My rates would have been similar to Journey's.

It's got me thinking. Anywhere I've worked, if software training has been delivered in house it's been written in house as well. The person/people who have had enough knowledge to train on software also broadly have had enough knowledge to prepare training materials for it, perhaps with some assistance. I was trying to work out why this scenario was something I'd not come across from either point of view, and that's why.

As an extension of the issue about taking your branding off if they mess with it, what about delivery? If you are not going to deliver, are you going to train the person who is going to deliver to make sure they do it right? And what about future people? Just some other things to think about.

The issue of branding only occurs if HappyNewMum2Be were to retain copyright - which is not what the client is suggesting.

Anna - I agree, in law. My comment was more in practice. If a training company develops and delivers a training session, they will often put the company logo on the slides, the handout, etc. The client may own the copyright in the document, but it is still often visible who wrote it. If the client has the right to edit the training materials then either the OP needs to be careful not to put any of her own branding on the materials, or to specify that that branding must be removed if the document is edited.

Normally my name appears on the bottom of the materials I write as author. The brand of the institution retaining copyright, where applicable, is visible from the logo preceded by a copyright mark (little c in a circle, my keyboard doesn't have one) - and also client standard layout, font etc.

Where I retain copyright, my name appears on the bottom of the document preceded by the copyright mark.

Anna - I totally agree with you, and that's a good way to do it.

However, I have also seen the opposite happen. A company writes a training presentation and brands it just the way they always would. The client then edits it and doesn't take the branding off... It happens surprisingly often if either client, company or both are not used to negotiating about copyright and I didn't want the OP to make that mistake, particularly if the client is a small organisation who may not be on the ball.