What should I include with my invoice for my freelance Magazine Article?

Question

My editor and I agreed to $1 per word, which will obviously be easy to invoice -- just $1 x ___ number of words. The only costs I've incurred are about a dozen long-distance phonecalls which I made in order to do interviews for the article.

Should I include the long-distance phone charges on my invoice? Is that considered "standard practice" or is that too presumptuous? I may ask my editor point blank about this, but doesn't it seem unfair to for the writer to absorb phone charges for an article requiring lots of interviews?

What are other people's experiences with this?

Answer 1

I think you are going to have to absorb the cost this time.  Unless you made an agreement with your editor that the magazine was going to foot the bill on long distance charges then you shouldn't bill him for it. It's been years since I have done a long distance interview and I did that at the magazine office on their dime.

But if you have a rapport with your editor I would put it to him - that way you can establish what future practice should be.

Besides if you are making your income solely on freelance writing then you should be able to write off your long distance charges as a business expense, yes?

Ultimately, I would get a better long distance package or use other tools, like Skype, email or even online videoconferencing to cut costs.

[or you can do what I do and only do face to face or local phone interviews]

Best of luck.