When I embarked on the adventure of self-publishing, I saw that this status was criticized for its lack of professionalism, particularly the correction phase. You have already understood that beta-reading was a first step (reading the article) and correction is just as essential. When certain authors choose to ignore it for, essentially, financial reasons, I find for my part that it is a bad calculation. Because you only have one chance to make a good first impression. And the substance of the story can be the most brilliant in the world, if the form is riddled with mistakes, it loses the pleasure of reading at best. At worst, it does the author a disservice to all his books! Because this will cause him to lose readers for the following ones, that's for sure.
ST: Hello Dany, thank you for giving me time to explain your job. What brought you to correction?
DA: Hello. It's chance, actually. Basically, I was HR director in a large company so it has nothing to do with it. But I always loved reading. When my son began writing his first novel, he asked me to correct it to reduce his budget. But no matter how well you master the French language, correction is a real skill to acquire. So, I trained myself to help him as best as possible.
ST: You actually have some great certifications to your credit.
DA: Yes, I have Excellence levels for the Voltaire certification and expertise for the LeRobert certification. Finally, I am validated by the EFLC, the French reader-corrector school.
ST: Does all this training represent an investment?
DA: Oh yes. We are talking about several thousand euros. Fortunately, I was able to use my CPF, which helped me a lot.
ST: Basically, it was just with the aim of helping your son?
DA: Actually, I retired and moved towards my other passion, dogs. But the dog trainer training that I was following made me realize that it wasn't for me after all. So, I thought about offering my correction services to other authors who needed them.
ST: How did you do it?
DA: I find the novels to correct via my Instagram account. Thanks to word of mouth. From my son at the beginning, even if he did not tell his colleagues that I was his mother, then by these authors who trusted me. That’s how you found me, right?
ST: Absolutely! And I thank Liz H Richardson for her recommendation!
DA: Furthermore, I also work quite a bit with John Lucas who does a lot for self-publishing. I correct his news voluntarily for his magazine Le MAEG and am in partnership with him for the authors registered in his directory with a preferential rate, as with another association which supports self-publishing. I think that what makes me public are, in addition to the quality of the correction😊, the exchanges with the authors and the fact that I always try to fix them when they are a little (or a lot) late (I play very often in Tétris with my diary! 😊), as well as my prices and correction times, fast and reliable: returning a corrected manuscript 4 days after receiving it is important in order to organize yourself for the release dates. What also reassures them is the fact that I am professional, I have a SIREN and T&Cs validated by a lawyer, I am certified Voltaire (988/1000 points!) and Le Robert, as well as by a school of Corrector. My T&Cs and prices are on Insta, which allows researching authors to get an idea, transparency is also very appreciated.
ST: How do you explain that a person cannot correct their own text?
DA: Because of our brain which transforms the text it has written: it no longer sees the mistakes because it knows the story and corrects missing words on its own, for example. Whereas an outside person will see them because his brain will not be able to correct a text that he does not know. For the record, I write columns that my son publishes. Well, he's the one who corrects them because I don't see my own mistakes while I have an eagle eye for those of others.
ST: I confirm. Unfortunately, despite all the time I can spend on my texts, I am always amazed at the number of corrections to be made that you send me...
DA: Knowing that, in any case, there will always be one or two that will have passed by too. Because we are not infallible. But yes, obviously, I know that I have real added value and that motivates me to sit down in front of my computer every morning.
ST: A priori, you work mainly with self-publishers, is it a deliberate choice on your part?
DA: At first, I didn't really think about it, I just accepted the requests I received when I could fit them into my work schedule. And then, some time ago, I was approached by a publishing house but I stopped the collaboration quite quickly. Because there was no communication: I had no idea what or when I was going to receive a text to correct. Since I make sure to stick to a schedule with other authors based on their needs, it wasn't viable. Plus, what I like is also the relationship with the authors and there, I had none.
ST: It is true that you often need to be able to ask for explanations or clarifications in order to correct the text as best as possible.
DA: Absolutely! In Fantasy, there are often invented words and I need to know if it's a proper noun with a capital letter or not for example. Same, for certain passages where there is a lot of repetition, I must understand the meaning of the word used to be able to come up with the right synonym.
ST: Because in your correction, not only will you track down spelling and grammatical errors but also check sentence structures, right?
DA: As far as possible. Sometimes it is necessary to cut a sentence that is too long. Or the meaning of another is unclear. I note all this. On the other hand, I make suggestions that the author is free to accept or not.
ST: I like your way of proceeding by making comments/corrections directly in the text. It saves a lot of time for me to just have to click "accept" or not. And like that, I'm sure not to miss a correction unlike when it's made directly in the text just in another color. Particularly for punctuation.
DA: It's a system that I put in place by talking to the authors and it works well according to the feedback I get. On average, they take 1 to 2 hours to correct their novels using my method.
ST: You offer correction but also proofreading. Can you explain the nuance you make between the 2?
DA: So the correction is the basic work of the raw text. Proofreading means tracking down the last typos in a text that has already been more or less corrected in one way or another. Besides, I don't use the same processes. For correction, this is what we just talked about while for proofreading, I work on my e-reader and send a PDF with my annotations. And I don't have the same slots either. The correction is in the morning while I will reserve the end of the afternoon for rereading because it does not require the same concentration. And in the evening I will read for my pleasure and write my columns to share my personal opinions.
ST: This explains the price differentials that can be found on your grid. How did you establish them?
DA: As I support self-publishing companies who trust me, I have voluntarily chosen to have fairly low prices for the profession. But I can afford it because I am already retired and this activity is complementary for me. It’s also my way of supporting self-publishing by being very accessible.
ST: And we thank you for that! Last question: do you have a favorite literary genre?
DA: As a proofreader, I don't select a particular genre. This sometimes pushes me to step out of my comfort zone but I don't read a text in the same way as a reader. This has nothing to do with.
I hope that through my articles you appreciate all the work that is done in the shadow of a novel! If you want to publish a book yourself, I can only advise you to use Dany's service to have it corrected in advance. You can contact her here . Be careful, she works with more than fifty authors and her schedule fills up quickly, so remember to anticipate your request without necessarily having finished your novel. For example, I saved the slots for my September and October releases in the spring even though I had only written the first draft of each.
Don't hesitate to tell me in the comments if you liked my article :).
nb: 2023 prices