Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m a self-employed editor, proofreader, transcriber and localiser. I wrote my first book to help people with high cholesterol back in 2013 and have since written about business from a first-hand experience perspective, with six books now out, including a value omnibus edition of my two bigger business books. I blog about business, social media, Word tips and language at www.libroediting.com and write as a part-time endeavour, aiming to help other people running small businesses.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My latest book is called “Quick Guide to Networking, Social Media and Social Capital”. I was inspired by the fact that I was getting a lot of searches on my blog for these topics, and had written quite a lot on them, so decided to put together a quick guide on the subject (my quick guides are 15,000-20,000 words long at a budget price and packed with information and links to further free resources).
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I write around my day job so I will write bits here and there. Although I base my books on blog posts I produce, one usually influences the other – the blog posts are there to give all the images for my book readers so they come along together. For instance, for my latest book, I wanted to write about Google+ in the book, so had to create a blog post full of screen shots for my book chapter to link to!
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Joanna Penn of www.thecreativepenn.com (who is also a client of mine) has a great mine of information and is very supportive of fiction and non-fiction authors. She inspired me to write about my own experiences. Other business books that expect their readers to buy more resources or download a course and otherwise don’t give all the information in one go but expect them to pay more inspired me NOT to do that with my own books!
What are you working on now?
I keep being asked to provide mentoring services for new businesses, especially in the proofreading/ editing arena. So I’m going to rewrite my two main business books into a package tailored for those people, with self-mentoring questions after each chapter. I will then produce a self-mentoring guide to go with my more general books out of that. I hope to have both of those out in early January 2015.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
My best website for sales is Amazon, but Smashwords and its link to iBooks on the Apple Store are doing well, too. I started a website for my books, and that channels readers through to buy – but my very popular professional website with its good SEO also drives a lot of enquiries there and direct to my sales channels, too. Word of mouth is great, too.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Be professional: get an editor (even though I’m an editor myself, I have an editor of my own for my books!) and professional cover design. Don’t give people the opportunity to go to your book with a bad feeling about its standards. Also, before you even write it, think about who your audience is and bear them in mind the whole way through. What do you want them to get out of your book? What are they looking for? What will help them best achieve that?
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Be professional is the biggie, I think.
What are you reading now?
I’m reading a history of the London Underground! Even though I work with mainly non-fiction texts all day, and learn a lot from them, I’m always learning and enjoying finding out new information. I’m a big reader – fiction, non-fiction, travel memoir and business books, mainly.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Putting together my new resources for editors, plus I want to write a book about how to use an editor, for writers who might not understand the process. That’s going to be another of my quick guides. I’m also – because I don’t have enough to do, right? – writing up some academic research I’ve been doing over the years, and that should be done by the New Year, too.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Complete Works of Shakespeare, War and Peace because I’ve never read it, Complete Works of Hardy (is that allowed?) and Iris Murdoch’s “The Book and the Brotherhood”.
Author Websites and Profiles
Liz Broomfield Website
Liz Broomfield Amazon Profile
Liz Broomfield Author Profile on Smashwords
Liz Broomfield’s Social Media Links
Goodreads Profile
Facebook Profile
Twitter Account