What it costs
What working through an audio archive costs — and what you're actually buying
There is no single human service for this, so the honest comparison is a composite: a research assistant at £150–£400 a day to work through the archive, plus a developmental editor to work out what the book in it is.
What good looks like
- A written map of themes with episode references
- Honest about how much was listened to versus skimmed
- Identifies repetition as material, not as waste
- Suggests a structure rather than an episode order
A separate free preview: A free outside view of your own pages
A separate editorial preview of one extract; it does not read the whole book or do the specialist job this page describes. Send up to 5,000 words. You get back what the draft appears to be doing to somebody who wasn't there when you wrote it, the strongest thing in it named, the exact place a reader starts to drift, and three revision priorities in order.
A separate editorial preview of one extract; it does not read the whole book or do the specialist job this page describes. An AI-assisted read of your own pages. Not a human edit, not a line edit, and not a scored report.
What you are actually buying
Working through an archive of recordings — episodes, sermons, interviews — to find what actually recurs, and what shape a book could take from it. Normally a research assistant or a developmental editor doing a lot of listening.
Why it costs that
There is no single human service that does this, which is why the price comparison is a composite: a research assistant to go through the archive, plus a developmental editor to work out what the book in it is. A day rate plus an edit is the honest equivalent, and for a sixty-hour archive it is a substantial piece of work before a word of the book is written.
How to spend less
Do not transcribe first. Transcribing an archive before you know what the book is produces an unreadable document at full price — you will use perhaps 10–15% of any archive, so the saving from analysing first is most of the transcription bill.
What good looks like
- A written map of themes with episode references
- Honest about how much was listened to versus skimmed
- Identifies repetition as material, not as waste
- Suggests a structure rather than an episode order
Questions to ask them
- How much of the archive will you actually process?
- Will you work from transcripts or audio?
- What do I get at the end?
Red flags
- A promise to process hundreds of hours cheaply
- An output that is an episode list in a different order
- Any claim to have heard audio that was not transcribed
Honestly
It finds what recurs. It cannot tell you which theme you care most about, and that judgement is the book. Expect to override the ranking at least once — the theme you are tired of is often the one readers want.
About Your Book Pro
Your Book Pro is a book-writing platform built in Britain. Start with an idea, notes, half a draft, a podcast, or a finished manuscript, and use our purpose-built AI tools for planning, feedback, editing, proofreading, cover designs, and to create print-ready files. Writing is totally free: you can type, upload or speak your book as much as you like, and use only the editing tools you need with Plus, or go unlimited with Pro.
Produce world-class drafts at the fraction of the cost of hiring a human editorial team.
Every account starts with 1,000 welcome credits, and a plain export of your own words is free.
These prices are here to be used, not to sell you something — brief a freelancer with them, sanity-check a quote, or work out what you actually need. Where Your Book Pro changes the arithmetic, the page says so; where it does not, it says that too.
It finds what recurs. It cannot tell you which theme you care most about, and that judgement is the book. Expect to override the ranking at least once — the theme you are tired of is often the one readers want.
What it costs
| What you are buying | Typical range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Research assistant, hourly | £25–£45/hr | UK freelance research rates, at or above CIEP substantial-editing minimum |
| 40 hours of recordings, themed and indexed | £1,000–£2,500 | Roughly 1 hour of analysis per hour of audio, plus write-up |
| Developmental editor doing the same job | £42.66/hr | CIEP suggested minimum, substantial editing |
CIEP suggested minimum rates effective 1 March 2026; Books.by; publishing.co.uk; The Ghostwriters Agency. Dated 9 September 2026.
Upload your archive
Email me my free review linkQuestions people ask
- What does thematic analysis of an archive involve?
- Reading across everything at once and reporting the recurring themes, where each is stated best, and where material repeats — which cannot be done by listening back linearly.
- How big does an archive need to be?
- Ten hours is enough to be useful; sixty hours is where doing it by hand stops being practical at all.
- Is this the same as transcription?
- No, and the order matters. Analyse first, then transcribe only what serves the book.
- Can I do it myself?
- With a small archive, yes, with a spreadsheet and patience. Past about twenty hours, remembering your own material stops being reliable.