What Makes a Good Author Bio?
Contributor
Written by
Maria Murnane
August 2016
Contributor
Written by
Maria Murnane
August 2016

Many debut authors don't know what to put in their bios. That's understandable! In fact, I recently met a debut novelist--I'll call her Lucy--whose bio at the end of her book was one line long. It said exactly this:

This is Lucy's first novel. She lives in San Francisco.

She laughed and said she knew it wasn't much, but she had no idea what else to write. She had't won any awards. She'd never written anything before. She didn't feel she had any relevant professional experience.

If you're in the same boat as Lucy, here are my two cents on the issue: I don't think what you write in your bio is as important as how you write it.

By "how you write it," I mean two things:

1) You write it well. That means no grammatical errors, no crazy long sentences, and no weird syntax.

If you're putting yourself out there as a professional writer, be sure that's reflected in your bio. (For example, I've lost track of how many indie authors refer to themselves as Authors in their bios.)

 

2)    Your bio shows readers what they can expect in your writing.

If your book is positioned as a comedy, make your bio funny! If your bio makes me laugh, I'm much more likely to want to read your book. If your book is a mystery, write something mysterious about yourself. (I could never write a mystery, so I'm not sure what I would do in this case, but you get my point.)

 

Of course if you have specific life experience that relates directly to the content of your book (e.g., you were a police officer for 20 years and the book is about a detective, or if you're a nurse or a doctor and the novel is about life in a hospital), of course include that information in your bio. For the rest of us who simply make things up for our stories, I truly believe that elements one and two are enough. So stop stressing and get writing!

-Maria

Maria Murnane is the best-selling author of the Waverly Bryson series, Cassidy Lane, Katwalk, and Wait for the Rain. She also provides consulting services to aspiring and published authors. Have questions? You can find her at www.mariamurnane.com.

 

This blog post originally appeared on CreateSpace.com. Reprinted with permission. © 2016 CreateSpace, a DBA of On-Demand Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved.

 

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Comments
  • Mary L. Farmer

    Helpful! Haven't seen too many articles on this subject. Carla King's advice below is great, too!

  • Veronica Marie Lewis-Shaw

    What about prior published work?

  • Is there anything one should definitely not do when writing a bio?  Thanks for the post.

  • Heather Greenis

    Thanks for this. Number 2 hit home with me. I've made some changes.  

  • Karen A Szklany Writing

    Great reminder!

  • Vivienne Diane Neal

    Great article. Thank you for sharing.

  • Carla King

    Thanks for this. I've found that it's very difficult for authors to do this on their own. It helps to have a writing group or friends who can help you brag a little more about yourself. Most of us are too reticent or modest to write our own marketing materials. The bio should also be keyword-rich. A good metadata strategy-careful attention to words that really and truly describe you and your book helps the google and amazon search engines show your stuff to the right book buyers. Metadata--scary word! But it just means words about words that describe you. :-)