Your book is written and now you find yourself lost for words. What can you say about yourself without sounding too cheesy, boring or self-promotional?
Unfortunately an author bio is something every author simply must have.
It is not something that needs to be done to just tick a box in the ‘About the Author’ page or a few words to go into the back cover of your book, but it is used in many more ways.
If you are undertaking speaking engagements about your book, appearing in print or on other websites, an introduction to you as the author is very necessary. Just as you want others to come to know your book, others will want to know the author too.
What you write about yourself needs to be in your voice and only write what is relevant.
What is your genre?
Would you think a gritty crime writer would write about themselves in an edgy to the point manner or would they include things that don’t match someone’s idea of a gritty crime writer? Sure, they may lead this type of a lifestyle but not share this in their bio for this type of book.
Another example, if you write children’s books, how do you want to be perceived? Showing a smiling face and writing about yourself in a happy, upbeat engaging way will attract buyers.
If you write an academic book or a book promoting your business, you need to speak from a place of leadership and authority. Your relevant experience, qualifications, accomplishments/awards are important to list here without boring everyone to the point of no return and I mean stick to relevant.
Getting it right
Simply write about yourself as you want to be perceived by your target audience.
If you think what you are writing is boring or unappealing, can you jazz it up by changing a few words around to use more dynamic, energetic types of words to lift your bio off the page and give it a bit more life? It is about you after all and you want to be appealing, interesting even intriguing.
You will need to have bios of different lengths ranging from 30 words which is a brief introduction to you, to more detail (up to 300 words approximately) for places where more detail is allowed/required.
If you really feel lost, then ask others to write this for you and you can then tweak it using your own voice.
Once written, don’t just let it lie. Review it every now and then to see if you are still happy and make any changes you deem necessary.
Read it out loud to see how the structure and content flows-or NOT!
If it doesn’t read well, do you think others may think your book will go the same way? Perhaps!
Finally to quickly summarize:
- Without overstating it, show how you are an authority and demonstrate credibility on the subject of your book. Of course this really does depend on the type of genre you write in.
- What can you write to establish credibility or what interesting facts can you include?
- Keep it to the point and try to be interesting.
Finally have a look at the author bios in a similar genre to yours on websites such as Amazon and Goodreads. See how you can apply the styles and tone that most best defines you and your unique voice and that you like best.