author bio

I've been reading Author Bios lately and it's fascinating what people choose to put in their two to three sentences.  What people feel is most important about themselves and what they feel other people want to know.

Some focus on heritage, education, personal history, academic achievements, and so on...

It got me wondering:

As an author, what's the most important thing you want people to know about you?

As a reader, what is the thing you care about most in an author's bio?  

As a reader, I am primarily interested in the path that brought the author to the point of writing this story. That is true of both fiction and non fiction writers. I prefer to read authors who have some real personal investment in the topic, setting, or story (what compelled you to write mysteries set on Martha's Vineyard with a fisherman protagonist? Why are you so interested in native pollinators of western North Carolina that you would invest the time to write a book about them? What did you experience that made you study the long term effects of homelessness in children? Why document building your family's home in upstate NY entirely by yourself?) I am interested in the story behind the story.

For certain types of books, there are some credentials that I might value, some education that lends additional credibility, but that is usually secondary. While i can use and appreciate a very clinical approach to some information, it's not my go-to. I prefer even my medical or technical reading to have some personal drive behind it.

I am often frustrated by writers who pick a place or a topic and go "live that life" for some prescribed amount of time and then write the "inside" account. Those feel false and  take me out of the experience, like a poorly executed accent in a movie. Bios with that sort of track record are helpful in turning me away from the author's work.

Writing an author bio is one of the hardest things I've had to do. It's hard to sell yourself without feeling corny about it. I write non-fiction homesteading type stuff, so mostly, I want people to know two things. One is why I'm qualified to write a book worthy of reading. The other is that my goal is to encourage them personally in their own homesteading journey.

As far as reading author bios, I rarely do until I've gotten interested in the book. If it's a good book and I like it, I become interested in the author as a person. That's usually when I look at their bio.  

Leigh Tate wrote:Writing an author bio is one of the hardest things I've had to do. It's hard to sell yourself without feeling corny about it.  

So true. As a writer, I ended up so stuck that I hired someone to write my "about me" page and even then I still kind of hated it. It was painful, like watching yourself on video and thinking "please tell me that isn't how I really sound". Assisting my sister with hers was so much easier. SO much easier.

I think for that type of writer, write some bullet points that seem like a good representation of the more interesting (pertinent) facts about yourself and then hand that list to someone who knows you well (or is at least insightful in general) and get them to put it into paragraph form for you. You may find that the focus that another person places on you is quite different to what you might have expressed, and might better represent how a reading audience might find you. That person is your friend for a reason and may know why others would enjoy getting to know something about you or your work better than you know.

Another way of looking at that may be that authors/writers often benefit far more than they can imagine from the assistance of a good editor. Even in writing one's own bio, a sympathetic but objective alternate viewpoint can be transformative.

Mine has evolved a lot over the 9 years since I first published. I'm still pretty much the same me, just older, but what I leave in and what I take out changes periodically.
I went to read my pen name's bio on Amazon, and it needs tweaking again! Because I write fiction, mine is as much about the type of stories I write as it is about me, because I think a reader considering one of my books will want to know what my books offer them more than anything else.

For fiction, I would like to know why the author writes about his subjects.

For non-fiction, I would like to know what they know about the subject.

Example: someone writing a permaculture book.  Where did they learn about permaculture?

Example: for a cookbook where did the author learn about cooking?

It's a tough question.

A book is an intimate conversation. It takes effort on both ends. So, tell me why I want to have this conversation.

Know your audience, and your likely future audience. Speak to them. A shotgun approach is just pissing in the wind.

Tell me why I should invest my time and focus. I am already overwhelmed and at sea in a tsunami of data and words and advertising and data. Tell me how our conversation will help me cut through the noise and find focus.

Easier said than done. Luck!

I have several versions of my bio, each built from the other.  I use the smallest bio acceptable for where it will appear.  A back cover blurb is two sentences.  An inside back cover flap or an inside back page bio  will be longer,, with more info about my history and my other writing, as well as the links to my website and to my social media accounts  There's no reason to go to great lengths with a bio as far as I'm concerned.  People who want to learn more can go to my website, or follow me on social media.  

Note that you can also have an Authors Note, or Afterward (or whatever you wish to call it) and write as much as you want about you and why you wrote the book.  

Back cover bio for my latest book, Dark Green:  
Lif Strand lives off the grid in a straw bale house way outback in New Mexico.  When she's not writing, she's taking photos, hiking, playing with fabric art, or caring for her retired Arabian horses.

My book takes place in the way outback of New Mexico, and  although my main character doesn't live off the grid in a straw bale house, the first sentence takes care of showing I know my book's setting. The rest gives an idea of who I am (not a highly social person but an active person) and maybe will get some readers curious enough to look at my photos.