JOURNAL OF A DEBUT AUTHOR - CHAPTER TEN: How do you write an author bio?

You know what? 

I don't really know how to write an author bio. They probably do need to match your personality and fit you and your work specifically, but also they need to change depending on what they are being used for.

And while I was researching how to do this, I came across some tips, that I have added into this post.

So I guess this post is a little more instructional and about what I learned on my own journey, instead of being a behind the scenes look.

​So like I said, I thought about this long and hard, and have gone through a bunch of different author bios on my website, and through my years of querying.
During that time, some of the best information I found on how to write a good author bio came from a few throwaway comments on the 'So You Want to be a Writer' Podcast, hosted by Australian writers, Alison Tait and Valerie Khoo.

​They said:
 

• WRITE YOUR AUTHOR BIO IN THIRD PERSON (no matter how dumb that makes you feel) because if you are ever lucky enough to go to an event where someone else wants to read out your bio aloud, it makes it a hell of a lot easier for them to read it straight out like you've written it, than trying to translate it from first person to third person on the spot. Writing your bio in third person therefore gives you more control over what other people may one day read aloud or copy and paste from your website, and also makes things easy for anyone wanting to feature you on their blog etc. And the easier the better!  You want an interested party to be able to just cut and paste your bio, instead of having to attempt to rewrite it to suit their needs.

 

• DON’T FORGET TO ACTUALLY INCLUDE THE IMPORTANT INFORMATION FIRST: Basically Alison Tait and Valerie Khoo said they read so many author bios which start off with a quirky piece of information, or a statement about their pet or whatever, when  really you need to straight away say: who you are, what your latest book is and what other relevant achievements you may have. This was interesting to me as mine was just a rambling long thing, but after hearing this tip I re-wrote it to immediately state that I am an Australian YA author, my debut is Making Friends with Alice Dyson, and I have been shortlisted for an award. Only after that did I start rambling on about whatever.

 

•  PUT YOUR PETS (FAMILY, FUNNY STORY ETC.) LAST: This is pretty much the same as the above, but it was just about making sure you wait until the professional stuff is done before you add in the fun stuff. And I really think there is absolutely nothing wrong with the fun stuff, but just make sure you tell readers what you want them to know first, get straight to the point in that opening paragraph. For instance, if you have a book or a genre or something that helps the reader understand you, put it first. 

 

• DIFFERENT BIOS FOR DIFFERENT OCCASIONS: I probably haven’t had much use for this one yet, but I thought it was a good point. My website author bio is a little different from the one that will appear in my novel. The novel one is more general and nice and fun for readers, but my website bio has actual information in it, like my literary agent’s name and stuff like that. I want that to be easy access for anyone who wants to know that stuff, but frankly, inside my book I don’t mind quite so much. The same goes for my Goodreads bio too, in that one it is really important to include my website and my socials links, so again, it was tweaked especially for that platform.

 ​

I guess another good tip if you are trying to write one of these, is to actually go and review a whole bunch of bios from authors you like within your genre. See how they do theirs, see what you think works and what you want to do differently.

And that is it from me! :)


Thanks for reading!
Let me know if you are working on your own author bio, and how it is going!