Sometimes, it’s difficult to let a project you’ve been working on so diligently to not only be scrutinised, but to now be handled by someone else. In an email exchange I simply said this:

You’ll need to be ready for someone else to handle the baby for a little while – I always have to help my clients be prepared for this as sometimes they can get a bit touchy about their art!

It’s true. But one of the things I have found helps is to clarify what a ghostwriter is, by using an example most people are quite familiar with. And that is the role of the music producer.

Having worked in music studios myself back in my younger years when I was working a music career (and now tinkering as an amateur producer), I learned quickly that the role of the studio producer is absolutely integral. They can essentially make or break a project. A good producer doesn’t just tell you to do the take again, or listen out if you’re going out of time, but also helps you to work with your reference material, aids you in your research, brings their own ideas, and helps guide the project to keep it focused. An album would be nothing without a good producer. Essentially, a good producer makes the project even better than it could have been. That’s what a ghostwriter does – but for books!

While a good editor will tell you to go back and write it again, or get rid of a chapter, or take out whole swathes of work you poured your life into, they won’t necessarily bring you ideas, help you in your research, work with you on reference material, and help you keep the book focused. That’s my job. I don’t just tell you how to write better but I help you to write better. I bring my own ideas and listen carefully to what it is you’re wanting to achieve with the book – and then I keep you focused.

Sometimes, this process can get a little irritating, I admit. You might feel like I’m taking over. Sometimes, you need to let a ghostwriter just take over for a bit. But a good ghostwriter is not taking over the project, what they’re doing is providing what the project needs to steer it into a direction that not only matches your original vision, but also matches what the market is looking for. This is why a ghostwriter is much more than an editor but at the same time not the original writer of the project. The big ideas are not mine, they are yours. You remain the writer, but I take on a producer role.

George Martin was often called the “fifth member of the Beatles” because of his creative contribution to their music as a producer of several of their albums. The unique role a producer plays in a group / artist’s career is well established. Ghostwriters are simply the same thing for writing. That’s why you can also think of them as “book coaches.” So, if you’re stuck, need help in focusing your writing project, and need creative input that helps you see your original vision come to light, it might be time to get a ghostwriter involved – before you work with an Editor.

SAIR is about indie authors. It’s the first time I’ve seen something that’s purely about indies, which was really cool. It was great meeting new people who do what I do – and completely understand the challenges! Here are the key take-aways from the event for me, which are relevant for any writer in South Africa.

1. You can do this thing

After meeting several authors and publishers at the event, who have been quite successful (a relative term, I admit, but we’ll explore that in more detail below) I was left thinking: Well, I really can do this. And I don’t have to do it alone anymore. There’s something about being around pros in the field that rubs off on you. Overall, I was left encouraged.

But I was also left challenged. Authors need to support each other in this country. We can’t complain that readers don’t support us as much as they actually could if we’re not even keen to support each other! A vibe around local authors starts with the authors themselves.

2. It’s not about the money

This came up again and again, but there needs to be clarity as to what this means. When people say, “Don’t get into this writing thing if you’re keen to make money,” I suspect they mean that you generally won’t make tons and tons of money. Well, making tons of money is different to making a sensible living. This isn’t mentioned often enough when this discussion comes up, even on blogs and so forth. One is generally left with the impression that anyone can make some serious cash in this business (usually you see lots of that on the Internet) or that one is going to live their life in the gutter forever (so you should only ‘write for love’). I don’t think either of these are true, generally speaking.

I’m not really about making tons of money, but I am keen to make a sensible living, and after this weekend I’m sure one can, especially after asking Rachel Morgan, (Creepy Hollow, Trouble series) an author who manages her entire writing business from end to end, how things are looking financially for her. Writing your own books for a living is a long-term career plan. It doesn’t happen over night. I’m convinced that it takes persistence and growth and a sensible goal, not a goal with shining lights and money like dust. When we have a sensible goal we can enjoy a sensible living, and have a real career in writing.

3. We’re on the cusp of something new

I enjoyed David Robbins‘ opinion on the future of publishing. Robbins is a veteran in this field, and hearing him speak of how excited he is about the opportunities writers have today with self-publishing and Kindle and the printing opportunities and social media, etc., was very encouraging. That – coupled with the success of Carlyle Labuschagne and a discussion with traditionally published (and very successful) author, Gareth Crocker (Journey from Darkness, King) – left me very amped.

4. Get on Kindle

I took my books off Amazon for a while as there was an issue with the royalties (South Africans could only get 30% royalties). I figured, after Paypal fees and FNB fees, I was really getting nothing, and it was better selling directly from my website. But David Henderson of myebook.co.za showed me where I was going wrong on the platform, and I’ve set it up and now get the proper 70 percent royalties. Stoked about that. Check out Henderson’s post: South African Authors – Should we give a damn about self-publishing on Amazon.com?

Thanks to Carlyle and the organisers. Looking forward to it being even better and bigger next year!

Recently, I interviewed a business owner in America who does pretty much what I do – ghostwriting, copywriting, journalism, SEO and so on. She was surprised to hear I was from South Africa and I was equally surprised to hear her mention that she had several great clients from South Africa. It made me wonder, why did those clients not look for a freelance writer in South Africa? Why did they choose an overseas service provider instead?

She’s very good at what she does and those clients have made a great choice by hiring her. But I couldn’t somehow feel that the reason why they didn’t hire someone locally is because they couldn’t actually find them. Or, at least, they couldn’t find someone who actually knew what they were doing.

Then I thought about my own business. Most of my freelance writing clients, at the moment, are from the U.S. These clients are in the media and communications industries, and I wonder if I’m sometimes writing for clients of theirs who are actually based in South Africa! It seems strange for the work to go out of the country only to come back in, but this is very possible.

This has made me think about the way South Africans use the Internet and, even more, how ineffectively businesses are using it. One of my U.S. clients are an SEO content company who have an SEO strategy for clients that really, really works. As a result, they’ve got some pretty big clients! Sitting in meetings with them over Skype I’ve realised that the difference between how the U.S. makes the Internet work for business compared to South Africa is huge!

As a result, even when you do a Google search on google.co.za, you often find overseas businesses popping up first (unless you search for a business or individual’s name). I don’t know how much google.co.za is supposed to find local business, but it certainly does present more local results than google.com. The only time you really get a completely local result, however, is if you tell it to only search for pages in South Africa – but most people don’t know how to do this.

I’ve often looked for writing jobs on the Internet at South African sites but there’s not much to choose from. A site like Gumtree occasionally has work but it always leads to a dead end – you email the client through the system but only get silence in return. As a result, freelance writing in South Africa is more about competing with overseas writers than local writers. That’s the global market, but I think there’s lots of South African talent who can really help South African companies with their Internet presence; or truly help South African individuals with writing their book. We’re just more about networking the old fashioned way than the new way, perhaps.