NaNoWriMo 2005

I was going to take part in the 2005 National Novel Writing Month but dropped out a week into November after realising I had far too much on (what with job apps, etc.) and yet have still been receiving the NaNoWriMo e-mails: I’m too lazy to untick a box on the appropriate page.

Anyway, I got an e-mail today telling me that NaNoWriMo are suffering from a debt problem to the tune of $10,000 due to expenses throughout the month/s. Out of sheer curiousity, I went and checked their expenses PDF and was incredibly shocked to see this:

Graphic design/web design costs: $4500
Author page and novel excerpt redesign, new store page, new drop-down menus, CSS clean-up of ten pages, winner certificate design, participant and winner icon creation, site spot illustrations.

Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t get why this costs so much? Sure, the store page which probably relies on a complicated e-commerce-y-doodaa (new word, whoo) shop cart system might cost a couple of hundred to develop and graphic design can be costly if you want top notch-stuff, but “CSS clean-up of ten pages”?! This is the kind of crap I do for free! “New drop-down menus”? What’s wrong with following a tutorial?

If people are willing to pay this kind of price, I think I need to up my prices.