Overview

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who loved listening to stories read by her mom. When she learnt to read herself, the wonderful world of books became a reality for her, and to this day, she can't get enough. Becoming a journalist happened automatically after finishing her studies (a BA with Afrikaans and Dutch as a major) - more because of her love of writing stories than anything else. But the reality in South Africa soon had her writing about all the ugly stuff, because this is what sells newspapers, unfortunately, and it was what her editors expected of her.
So she resigned from Media24, and started working as a freelance editor/translator in the educational publishing industry – something that she enjoyed from the outset. Being an optimist and an idealist, the idea of contributing to something that is as uplifting as education, made her feel right at home. She also loved working with language itself. Her career led her to work as a freelancer for three years, then to join Pearson Education as a Managing Editor on a contract basis, and eventually joining Pearson Education Africa as a Managing Editor in a permanent position.
Now she is passionate about her job, contributing to the education of the children of Africa, and she is living happily ever after!
Louise is also passionate about her own language, Afrikaans. So, in her spare time, she likes to make a difference in another way: there are so many wonderful books out there that the Afrikaans reading community do not have access to, or don't enjoy reading, because it is written in English. Translating books into Afrikaans is thus something that she loves and believes is necessary to make the world of the Afrikaans reader open up to what is on offer world wide.

Services

Fiction

Non-Fiction

Project management of various titles for the African market from manuscript phase up to submission and/or real book. This includes commissioning of editors, illustrators, proofreaders, indexers, etc, and managing the process within budget and on deadline. Quality control. Problem solving.

Project management of various Afrikaans language titles (novels, poetry anthologies, short story anthologies) for the South African senior schools market from manuscript phase up to submission. This included commissioning of editors, illustrators, setters, proofreaders, indexers, etc, and managing the process within budget and on deadline. Quality control. Problem solving.

Freelance Publishing Services:

Project Management; Editing; Translating; Proofreading; Writing (and over-writing)
Reporting; Photography
Recent work: Proofreading of English titles for NB Publishers, eg. Gang Town; Roughing It

Service included:
News reporting, news & media releases, newsletters, magazine articles, columns, web articles, speeches, copywriting, promotional writing, graphic design for newspapers & magazines, copy editing, proofreading, translating, research, reports, and more

Promotions Coordinator:

Meeting with advertising clients, gathering information, photography
Writing advertorials
Translating advertorial copy
Layout
Organising, launching and handling competitions
Getting sponsors and liaising with them
Organising hand-over of prizes
Organising functions
Promoting new book releases in the newspaper with write-ups and sms-competitions

Proofreading:

Display advertisements; Internal communication of Marketing Department

Copy writing:

Internal marketing material for supplements and features
Advertising material for competitions
Advertorials

Journalism:

Writing of editorial content for features and supplements
Research, interviews, photography, layout

Reporting on news in the Velddrift area on the SA West Coast; Photography. Interviewing. Also page layout 2 days of the week in the office.

Reporting on crime, local government, human interest, business, entertainment, sports, schools, events and more

Photography. Page layout. Copy editing. Proofreading.

Louise started the business and managed it for the period mentioned. This included managing editorial content, ad sales, graphic design - advertisements and page layout, human resources, creditors and debtors, print orders as well as distribution and PR.

Louise started her second period at Ons Kontrei handling a small ad-booklet, Die Snuffeltjie. She covered a range of tasks including ad sales, graphic design (Corel Draw), liaising with clients, copy writing, presenting proofs to clients and doing page layout. The editorial content was also thought out, resourced, written and designed by her. When other sales staff resigned, she automatically moved into ad sales for the newspaper once again. With only one graphic designer on duty (with a heavy work load), Louise continued doing copy writing, designing her own ads, taking photographs, writing advertorials, sending proofs to clients, as well as doing page layout.
Although not officially a journalist, she continued writing articles when coming across an interesting news story.

Louise started as a junior journalist, ad representative and layout artist. The business was small and so was the staff; so multi-tasking was part of the job. She wrote community news stories – from local school news, sports and municipal news to crime, news of the wine industry and business news. She sold advertisements to local businesses and was responsible for page layout as well. She worked in Vredendal and surrounding areas including the towns of Lutzville, Klawer, Vanrhynsdorp, Citrusdal, Clanwilliam, Lamberts Bay and as far north as Springbok in the Northern Cape. The job taught her to work as part of a team as well as independently and to adhere to deadlines.

Gang Town

Don Pinnock

Cape Town is two cities. One is beautiful beyond imagining, known since its beginning as the 'fairest cape' in the world. Here tourists come to lounge on beaches, scale misty peaks and dine in fine restaurants. The other is one of the most dangerous cities in the world, where police need bullet-proof vests and sometimes army backup. Here gangs of young men rule the night with heavy calibre han... read more

Cape Town is two cities. One is beautiful beyond imagining, known since its beginning as the 'fairest cape' in the world. Here tourists come to lounge on beaches, scale misty peaks and dine in fine restaurants. The other is one of the most dangerous cities in the world, where police need bullet-proof vests and sometimes army backup. Here gangs of young men rule the night with heavy calibre han... read more