Drafting an Author Bio involves hacks mentioning your credentials, adding a cool quotient, relating with your readers. Well, to get started, in this blog, we look at 15 Points to remember while drafting an Author Bio and with examples so that you could implement them.
Writing the killer author bio that immediately compels the bibliophiles to get to know you as a person even better.
You’ve written the book, great. Now provide your target audience with a reason to grab it up and immerse themselves in it.
1. Always Write in Third Person
We know you’ve heard this numerous times, but we can’t miss out on the basics now, can we? If you want to make your readers hold you in high esteem, begin the first sentence of your author bio with your name. These matters because you want to give off the notion that somebody else, say your agent wrote it for you. You can always pair it with personal detail, say your age, or location, or both!
For example: “Azra Tabassum is a 19-year-old English Student and hopeless romantic who lives on the South Coast of England.” This bio is from the book ‘Shaking the Trees’ and the author has mentioned her age, qualification, and location all in one sentence.
2. Mention Your Credentials
Credentials are an essential parameter for your author bio because they demonstrate your credibility and give an account of why your readers should consider your word important. If you’ve written a book on Financial Literacy, your readers would want to know that your wisdom comes from a place of expertise.
For example: “JAY HEINRICHS is a journalist, persuasion expert, and media consultant whose clients have ranged from Southwest Airlines to NASA.” This bio is from the book Word Hero: A Fiendishly Clever Guide to Crafting the Lines that Get Laughs, Go Viral and Live Forever. Now people may want to read it because the author has deemed himself as a connoisseur in the field he’s written about.
3. Add That Cool Quotient
Ask yourselves, what makes you stand out from the lot? Is there something interesting that can set you apart from the thousand others publishing their books each day? This is where the cool quotient comes in. Cool Quotient is the blatant self-expression that can immediately strike a chord in the minds of your readers.
For example: “Azra Tabassum is a 19-year-old English Student and hopeless romantic who lives on the South Coast of England and spends her days crying over fictional men and cats that she does not own.” The latter part of this sentence specifies a fun element and tells the readers that she’s a cat lady. This information urges the readers to form a certain kind of image about the author in their minds.
4. Relate With Your Readers, Be One Of Them
Establishing a personal connection with your readers makes them feel at ease while reading your book. Not only do they resonate with you, but it also entrenches a sense of comfort in their minds. Your words are often a testament to your ideologies and beliefs, and if they seem too far out of reach, the readers may feel hesitant while reading.
For example: “Azra’s lifelong dream is to fall in love with a man with a beard and retire to a small cottage in Scotland to raise an army of felines, open a small bookshop and of course, spend her days writing books and eating chocolate.” This bit emphasizes that she’s an ordinary woman with little and warm eventual goals like the rest of the readers and adds a sense of belongingness, offering them another reason to lose themselves in her book.
5. Use the Before and After Trick
Probably the most under-rated hack of drafting author bios, but this works like a charm. Using this, you can blend two sentences and make them engaging as well. It’s just a hack to compose better sentences that not many people take advantage of.
For example: “Before finding his way to Australia, William Von Hippel was a professor of psychology at the University of Queensland.” In this, he covered his current location and his previous profession. Another example: “After she’s done spending her day with her students, Rebecca likes to devote her leisure to reading fantasy books and playing with her dog.” Here along with her full-time profession, hobbies are covered too. Win-win!
6. Connect With The Readers Personally
Putting in a bit of personal touch can deliver the readers with the emotional connection that goes a long way in remembering the author. This can be done by linking your social media accounts at the end, adding some personal details of your life etc.
For example: Say you’ve gotten married recently, then you can use this fact to gain a teeny bit of attention from your readers. “Jane currently resides in Illinois with his wife Claire, whose presence has made this book possible today. You can see the glimpses of their spring wedding on his account @janeclaire.” Who doesn’t get enchanted to divulge in a perfect love story?
7. Write 4 Values You Abide By
This tactic goes a long way because your readers know what values you bring to the table as a novelist. This is also a tremendous standpoint if you want to display integrity and convey how you are as a person.
For example: “As an artist, Rudy Francisco is an amalgamation of social critique, introspection, honesty, and humor.” This line is from the author bio of the book Helium by Rudi Franciso. It captivates the reader’s attention and tells them the values and moralities that the author upholds.
8. Show Yourself Off A Little
Writing a book is a grand, effortful remark of your existence. You’ve created something that’ll be here long after you’re gone. Leaving a mark through your words is a significant benchmark of your hard work, so there’s no reason to shy away from owning it up when it comes to credits. You can subtly and smartly flaunt your successes.
For example: Say you’ve won some literary awards from your university, or a consecutive medal for outstanding performance over the years, etc., then you must put in your author bio. It tells the readers about your consistency, determination, and the spirit of directive action.
9. Express Your Genre Through Your Bio
This is one of the most elegant ways of telling people what your book will be about. If you manage to fetch their interest in this bit, they would intrinsically assume that the book’s build-up will be to their liking.
For example: ‘Shaking the trees’ by Azra Tabassum is a romance, poetry, and prose book. Her author bio includes the line, “She writes about all the love that has not happened to her and all the desire she has yet to experience.” This is probably the best way to introduce your audience to the kind of content they should expect to look forward to.
10. Remember, It’s Not Your Resume
You do not have to go overboard with your achievements and tell every single detail spanning your career. Publishing a book for the first time does feel like you’ve conquered some divine realm, and it’s only natural to want your readers to know all that leads you where you are today, but this isn’t solely about you. This is about what you’re offering to your readers as an author.
Another significant aspect is not to make the language too professional while drafting your author bio. Keep It straightforward, precise, and conversational. The friendlier you sound, the more enthusiastic your readers will be towards the book.
11. Experiment with Your Tone
Usually, the tone should be affirmative and intriguing, but you can stir up the fun here. You can use your author bio to accentuate the narrative of your book further.
For example: If you’ve written a fantasy book where the main character dies under mysterious circumstances, and it is revealed in the end, then you can say something like, “His favorite pastime is deciding the most wicked ways of death for his characters, and inculcating the same in his book.” We’d be lying if we said we aren’t tempted to find out!
12. Keep It Concise
The precision power is mostly overlooked while writing bios for the first time, as new authors want to convey as much about them as possible.
The perfect author bio is usually 200-250 characters long and concisely covers all necessary details. Remember, the more you stretch it, the duller it gets. Sound mysterious and leave room for your readers to invent a personality for you as they please, based on your book.
13. Add Only Relevant Information
This is another overlooked element that first-time authors usually ignore. Since the word count should be limited, adding only the information that has something concrete to do with the book is essential.
For example: If you’re a software engineer by profession and you’ve published romance fiction, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense if you emphasize much on your full-time job achievements.
14. Add A Call to Action Word
A Call to Action simply means you’re telling your readers what to do next. It works because readers assume that being a storyteller, your life would involve a series of exciting happenstances that they’d want to be a part of. A Call to Action gives them a brief about where to find you, what more they can expect from you, and redirects them to a fragment of your life.
For example: “You can witness a glimpse of his perfectly alluring life on his Instagram handle @janedoe.”
15. End with Your Current Endeavors
While it’s always a good idea to end author bios with cool and quirky sentences, telling readers about your ongoing pursuits helps too. Not only is it more organized, but it also implies that your bio is up to date and gives an indication about your current position in life.
For example: “Along with working on the next series of his book, John is currently advancing his financial services to a start-up venture based in Brisbane.” This replenishes the audience with curiosity about the next book and tells them that their author has a direction.
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