I have been self-employed for 2 years and most of my work is in web development/general IT. I mostly work for small businesses and sometimes they need extra things like graphic design. Often my clients aren't super interested in paying for a graphic designer as well and I pride myself on being able to put together something decent for them. I am not a graphic designer but I have gotten pretty decent at GIMP and I am a quick learner.
Now on to the situation. One of my clients that I have been working for since the beginning of my self-employment started a new business and wanted me to do some web design for him as well as create a brochure for the business. I did fine with the website but the brochure didn't go as well. When he asked me to do the brochure I told him that I hadn't done one like that before but I was pretty sure I could figure it out. He told me that I could feel free to take some extra time on it to make sure that it looked professional.
The trouble started when he gave me a brochure by another company to get the pictures off to use for his brochure (he is friends with the owner of the other company and had permission to do this so no copyright worries). I have access to a digital scanner so I didn't think it would be a problem, but it turned out that the scanner didn't scan at a very high resolution and so the pictures were poor quality. When I discovered this, I asked him to try and get the original pictures from the other company but he never sent them to me so I just went with what I had.
When I sent the brochure to the printing company, the image resolution was poor (because of the digital scans) and the brochure looked blurry. Also, the printing company informed me there could printing issues because I didn't include bleeds and trim marks on the images I submitted (this was completely my fault due to my ignorance).
I would like to try and fix it, but I am no longer quite as confident in my skills in this area. Maybe I can fix it with the original pictures, but maybe I can't. Either way, I am not sure that I should bill for the time that I spent on the brochure since it was not a product that was to the level the client was expecting. He hasn't asked me not to bill him, but I want to do the right thing.
I want to have a reputation for taking care of my customers and if not billing for this is what that takes, it is worth it.