I am doing my first "paid" consulting job writing a business plan. 
They are developing a business plan.  This is not a new company, they
have been in business for several years.  The purpose of developing a
business plan now is to secure additional capital via bank loans.  I
have an MBA, develop marketing plans for one of the top ten brands in
the work and have some experience writing mock business plans, however
this will be my first "real world" company business plan.  Given the
current small size of the company, if it is written and developed
correctly, there is little risk of failure of this plan.  I AM NOT
INTERESTED IN OUTSOURCING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THIS PLAN.

I will be developing the entire plan, including:
-The Executive Summary
-The Products and Services 
-The Market
-The Marketing Strategy
-The Competition
-Operations
-The Management Team
-Personnel

I will be provided with the following required information of the
business plan from the company's CPA:
-Financial Data
-Supporting Documentation

The development of the plan will come from interviewing (multiple?)
the CEO/President and getting his vision of the company out of his
head and onto paper (something that is not his fortay; enter me).

The company's expectations for this plan have been set low, but the
plan has to be credible enough to convince a bank for additional
financing.  I also tend to underpromise and overdeliver, and I have
the reputation for being very thorough.  Therefore I want to make sure
I am compensated accurately for my time spent on this plan, which
ultimately brings me to my question:
 
Given my graduate degree education (a plus), marketing for a top brand
(a plus), but only "mock" experience in developing business plans (a
negative) the question is this:  What would be a reasonable price to
charge for developing this business plan?

I have written a couple of business plans I would usually charge
around $1000 - $1500.  The market overview part will be the most time
consuming depending on the business area so that should factor in on
the price.

I have had some experience in consulting and writing business plans. 

What I would recommend to you is to turn around the situation and ask
yourself what is the business plan that you are executing on your own
behalf. For example let us say that you would like to achieve net
(after expenses) income of $200,000 per annum. If you were going to
work (say) 240 days per year to achieve this then your daily rate
would be circa $830 per day. If you are going to charge by the hour
then you will need to assess how many hours per day you would be
willing to work (usually long in my experience!) and then calculate
the hourly rate accordingly. If you expect to work for a week on the
job then you can price it accordingly.

However beware of job scope creep - what happens if the management
want you to expand, or revise endlessly the business plan?. You should
ensure that you deliver and charge for what you promise to deliver and
charge extra for any additional requirements. I would very strongly
recommend that you develop a standard 'Letter of Engagement' to be
revised only in the scope for each job you do. This will cover such
things as 'additional work' etc and allow you to define for each
assignment what exactly you are being paid for. More importantly it
will give you an appropriate mechanism to charge extra should the
client want more than they originally contract for.

It is usual practice to charge for your expenses on top, therefore if
you have to (say) visit a satellite office and stay over then
travelling/accomodation etc would be on top. I'm assuming here that
you are operating from home and 'office' type expenses are fairly
negligible. Only you can say what additional expenses you may neeed to
cover to acheive your target net income (factor these into your daily
rate). One thing that I would point out is not to undersell yourself.
If you are performing a quality job then you should charge an
appropriate price (this is why working from your anual expectation is
a good starting point - you will have a 'sense' of what annual income
you can expect from the position you are in).

Dear qbod-ga,
            I have viewed your question,and would not normally be
adding any comment,however,it appears,that the comments to you are
from non professional people and should be taken as such.As a base
line,your fees,depending on the size and complexity of the plan,should
be hourly,I charge $150.00 per hour(Australian Dollars)plus GST and
any additional costs,P.S I have been a business consultant for 25
years,and have major contracts with Woolworths and Coles. Kind regards
Horizonconcepts.

I have quite a bit of experience writing business plans. $1000-$1500
is ridiculously low.

Going rates for professionally developed plans can fall anywhere in
the $15,000 to $50,000 range. All depends on how much time you're
going to be putting into it and how much value you will be adding (in
other words, are you just going to be interviewing people or providing
your own insight & analysis, guiding strategy development, etc.) After
all that, you need to weigh how much the customer will/can pay.

Typical terms call for about 1/4 - 1/3 up front, then the balance in 1
to 2 payments after meaningful deliverables.

Good luck.