Personal historians lurking?

Hello all. First time on the boards but I've been a long time "lurker". I look, I read, and get reenergized to get back to work so I can pay the college bills for the kids.

Got a new challenge in place and looking for some help please.

I've been contacted by a local business owner who's starting a new company offering written family biographies. Say you want to capture all your mom's family memories,recipes, stories whatever. You'd hire this company to "publish" this for your family. The owner gives you a starter questionnaire ( pages and pages) that you fill out with memories, facts and figures. Then I (THE PROFESSIONAL WRITER) swoop in after reading all this gathered info, do a couple of taped interview sessions, and write the thing. Averages about 100 pages. The company then reviews it with the family, gets it printed and delivers it to them.

Anyone done anything like this so I can estimate my time, and therefore set an initial rate for this?

Thanks

Peg

Thanks John and others for the comments.

Good point on asking what he brings to the table. He's a businessman with the up front cash right now...I thinking that I'm purely the writer for hire in this project. He does the marketing, negotiating, interaction with the families (quesstionaire coordination, initial discussions) up until my one/two in person interviews. He has someone trascribe tapes of interviews and along with the info from the families gets it all to me. I get a couple of weeks to write, famlies review. I do one edit/rewrite (additional at hourly rates) then I step out. I GET PAID. He handles billing, design, book covers, printing and coordination with families. By this time time I'm hopefully on to the next family's project.TO GET PAID AGAIN.

I also can do marketing, and pr for this at my usual hourly rates if I have the time from other projects.

Why not just do this on my own? Well, I hadn't really thought of it! He did! He was referred to me by a long time client who uses me for copywriting projects. There is one woman in town who does something like this...but she only does 1-2 a year. I can't/don't want to give up my other clients/projects to devote full time to do because those darn colleges expect me to pay the bills for my two college students... but I do think not only would it be personally fulfilling to me to have capture family memories and it could open the door for me to do some corporate histories in town for MUCH HIGHER project fees.

I'm going to explore it with him a little more next week. There is a great untapped market of very wealthy families in our region who I think would pay well for a project like this.

I love the feedback-thanks to all. Keep it coming!

Peg