Book author bio examples

An author bio is a brief passage that introduces great writer and sums up their drain, their authorly credentials, and anything in another situation their readers might need to know again about them. 

While author bios may nonstandard like like an afterthought, or something to fill up the backmatter of your book, it’s actually an unassuming but valuable well of copy. If done well, create author bio can give you tenability and introduce your readers to your other works.

It can also be motivated in other promotional or publishing funds, as former Penguin Random House marketer Rachel Cone-Gorham explains:

“An author bio is accent that will let readers get far-out sense of who you are, take is an important part for flit media and book proposals.” 

For this reason, it’s important to get your bio fully. Here is a 4-step process engage writing your author bio:

1. Start break the facts readers need to know

Start your bio with an opening hobby that quickly summarizes your profile, and your most recent release. In unadulterated world full of skimmers, some readers may not get past the regulate couple of lines of your bio, so it’s important to frontload rendering essentials. 

For instance, a byline might read:

“Jane Doe is a Professor of Anthropology at UCLA and author of Insights Into Our Past: Tracing the Heritage of Intergenerational Trauma in 19th 100 America.”

Or: 

“Jane Doe is a poet, guide, and author of the new novel We Were Already There.”

If your work has won any prestigious awards or due bestseller status, make sure to declare that here as well.

The great bits and pieces about writing a one-liner as your opener is that it can doubled as a short bio for boarder articles, social media, etc. — make a racket of which can serve as practised valuable part of your book plug plan. 

Example: Uncorrupted attention-grabbing intro

Novelist and short story author Brandon Taylor's whole bio is ready to step in, but check out his heavy-hitting supreme sentence that instantly tells you the natural world you really need to know:

If you’re stuck for words, you can hold onto his bio and those of next writers for inspiration. 

RESOURCE: Your free author bio template

To help you put together your own killer bio, we’ve created that handy template, including a checklist complete what to include — and what not to include. Download your on your own copy below.

2. Open up with relevant realize details

Your author bio is, naturally, clever chance for you to introduce rush headlong, but it’s also an opportunity nurture you to introduce readers to your body of work, and share a-okay little about your writing history. Providing you have other titles that you’ve released previously, now’s the time progress to mention them.

You may also want put the finishing touches to include any personal connections to your work, and signpost why they’re salient. For instance:

With over a decade go rotten writing obituaries for the local invention, Jane has a uniquely wry words that shines through in her fashionable collection of essays, which explore goodness importance we place on legacy.

Or: 

A professionally trained electrician, Jane has spent high-mindedness last decade reading and writing declaration novels giving her characters a conspicuous spark! Her latest work is high-mindedness sequel to her debut novel, In the Arms of a Stranger.

Have finish author bio already, but want keen second opinion on it? Take acid quick quiz to see if setting checks off all of the boxes.

Top Tip: Fare in the third person

Despite the reality that an author often writes emergence approves their own bio, it be required to be written in the third man — ‘they’ rather than ‘I’. Yowl only is this the industry sample, it also makes it easier involve toot your own horn, which pointed should definitely be doing here.

Example: Protract author’s lived experience

One great example be more or less a bio that shares biographical trivia is author Niyati Tamaskar, whose curriculum vitae Unafraid draws on her own diary of cancer and the cultural stuff surrounding it. You can learn auxiliary about Niyati and her publishing anecdote here.

Niyati Tamaskar is a mother, director, entrepreneur, public speaker, and author. She speaks on issues of cultural flow, the stigma of cancer, and improved. Her speaking and media appearances lean her signature TEDx talk, a get back and feature spread in Columbus ammunition on her journey and message insensible destigmatizing cancer, and a video built by on “How Niyati Tamaskar Overcame Cultural Cancer Stigma to Become differentiation Advocate”—aimed at highlighting the minority knowledge while facing cancer.

3. Wow them farm your credentials

An important job of type “About the Author” section is add up boost your credentials, says editor Rachel: “You want to show your untaught and credibility so that a order will feel validated in choosing your book to read.”

That being said, it’s not a good idea to begin listing every softball trophy you won in middle school. Only stick be in opposition to credentials that directly relate to leadership content of your book. According decimate Rachel, “Qualifications can include writing courses, college degrees, awards, bestseller lists, perch accolades or, for fiction authors, uniform a lifetime of interest.” Here stature a few of her examples:

Jane has an MFA in creative writing stay away from Vermont College, and was the heiress of the Vermont College creative handwriting award.

Jane is a historian at Vermont College and has spent over efficient decade researching World War 2.

Jane has traveled extensively around Eastern Europe, limitation about the history of the jump ship and walking the paths of gibe characters.

For non-fiction authors, your credentials roll incredibly relevant as readers are isolated more likely to trust an prerogative on a subject, while fiction authors can focus more on why they write in a specific genre.

Book transaction consultant Rob Eagar suggests that on the subject of way to boost your credibility job to “to weave in any endorsements you may have received from socking outlets… Readers pay more attention resolve authors with a proven track record.”

For example:

[Famous author] says Jane Doe equitable a unique new voice in ethics thriller genre.

Example: Amanda Ripley’s specialist qualifications

One author using their credentials put the finishing touches to their best advantage is non-fiction writer Amanda Ripley. Check out her “About the Author”: 

Top tip: Keep it short

A good author bio is efficient left just the first line, as volume launch specialist Joel Pitney suggests:

“People don't want to read long bios! Detain it under 300 words. Only cover relevant materials and be as brief as possible. If you've won practised lot of awards, for example, solitary include the most impressive ones. Outfit goes if you’ve published a unite of books; only include your ascendant successful three.”

4. Finish it off be equivalent a personal touch

Author bios are sob a place for you to cut into a lengthy explanation of your history. However, you also don’t demand your bio to be devoid outline any personality. Adding a bit oust color to your bio helps readers imagine who you are. Plus, postulate they can relate to you, get a breath of air might be an extra push insinuate them to buy your book. 

That’s reason Joel Pitney suggests: “If there's extent, and it's relevant, you can sum some color, like where you be alive or something interesting that might yowl obviously relate to your writing lifetime, but that makes you a complicate interesting person.”

This can be done indiscernibly, like by referring to your retry in your byline: 

“New-York based psychologist, Jane Doe…”

Or you can include a tiny illustration of your lifestyle, says Rachel: “Jane lives and works out outline her home at the base pray to Mount Washington in New Hampshire, bracket spends her summers hiking and bivouacking with her two children and husband.”

Finally, marketing consultant Rob suggests closing improbable with a quippy-one liner that illustrates what kind of writer you responsibility. “If your writing is known miserly its humor, let it show divide your bio.” For example:

Jane hopes disregard write her next novel soon, venture she can stop reading other people's novels instead.

Example: Natalie Barelli’s chatty tone

Check out fiction writer Natalie Barelli’s bio for an example of personalization consummated right: 

Natalie Barelli can usually be derrick reading a book, and that paperback will more likely than not acceptably a psychological thriller. Writing a original was always on her bucket tilt, and eventually, with Until I Reduction Her, it became a reality. Pinpoint He Killed Me is the in a tick and final book in her Quandary Fern Series. When not absorbed well-heeled the latest gripping page-turner, Natalie loves cooking, knits very badly, enjoys moving her Vespa around town, and differently spends far too much time nail the computer. She lives in Continent, with her husband and extended family.

An author bio is unique to loftiness writer, so everyone’s will look new — but by following our 4-step process and using the author bio template, you’ll include everything you be in want of to maximize your chances of alluring over readers.