How to Write Your Awesome Author Bio

A great author bio is often overlooked. We see countless Amazon sales pages that lack a well considered and detailed author biography. You may wonder why an author biography is important? Well there are a number of reasons as detailed below.

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Non-Fiction

If you are a non-fiction writer then your author bio is an opportunity to demonstrate your credibility. Cover your professional background, your experience regarding the topic of your book and why you are qualified to write about this topic. It acts as another element in the sales process. If you were buying professional services you would want to know if the provider was qualified. The same is true for a non-fiction author.

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Fiction

Although your professional background will not be under scrutiny, readers will want to know who you are. They will want to know about your writing history and what inspired you. If you have won writing competitions or studied your craft. If you are writing a historical fiction novel readers will want to know what research you have done on the topic. Your author bio is very important for book marketing as reviews, bloggers and journalists will be wanting to get to know you. The more interesting and unique it is the more they have to write about.

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How to Write Your Author Bio

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1. A great opening line that grabs attention!
2. Talk about your work - what you have written.
3. Why you are qualified to be writing about this topic.
4. Something that makes the reader say wow.
5. Keep it brief.
6. Write in the third person

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1. A great opening line that grabs attention!

This is the first impression that a potential reader is going to takeaway from your sales page. Here is a great example from author Robert Fabbri - "Robert Fabbri read Drama and Theatre at London University and has worked in film and TV for 25 years as an assistant director." That intro grabs my attention. With that experience and time invested on Film and TV, chances are he knows a thing or two about telling a good story.

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2. Talk about your work - what you have written.

This step is straightforward. Give the reader some flavour for what they can expect from your work. What are your books about and are you a first time author or have you published many books?

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3. Why you are qualified to be writing about this topic.

Again we can turn to the author bio written by Robert Fabbri for inspiration - "Robert's life-long passion for ancient history inspired him to write the Vespasian series." Now I don't know about you but if ancient roman history has been your passion for a lifetime, chances are you're going to know enough about the topic to write an accurate and enjoyable book. Additionally, the use of the word passion here really highlights how much this topic means to the writer.

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4. Something that makes the reader say wow.

We believe there should always be something memorable in your author bio that makes the reader say "wow!". Robert's autho bio has another great example of this. "He has worked on productions such as Hornblower, Hellraiser, Patriot Games and Billy Elliot." Those are all incredibly well known productions which reinforces why it would be worth giving his books a read. Furthermore reviewers, journalists and bloggers would be interested to talk with Robert for this fact alone. Thus, it is a huge help when considering this from a book marketing perspective.

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5. Keep it brief.

Very important to keep it short and to the point. Some say 300 words is the limit but here at PublishingPush we would say a good author bio is between 100 and 150 words. That is a great length. Anything over 250 words is getting too long. You don't have to include all your achievements here just the salient facts. You can explain more in the interviews and features that follow.

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6. Write in the third person.

Third person is a must for your author bio. It is simply more professional.

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