Who You Are and How You Got Here

I find two things deceptively hard to write: thank you notes and author bios. The bio should be easy, right? You know who you are and what your accomplishments are. It’s only a few sentences. But striking the right tone while still getting across the necessary information is a challenge.

Recently I stumbled across Jami Gold’s post about author bios and getting the right tone. She shares a lot of helpful/fun links on the topic, and her hilarious post makes me feel a lot less stressed about the whole process. Still, Jami has some suggestions for the basics:

If we look at author bios from a reader’s perspective, the “what to include” recipe is:

  • Start with an indication of type of writer (genre, tone, etc.)
  • Stir in something to sound relatable (habits, where live, pets, family, etc.)
  • Sprinkle with contact information for blog, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc. (this also helps with being relatable)
  • Add humor and/or voice
  • Prepare in a way to show we can tell a story

Additional things we can include when applicable:

  • If we’re agented, mention our agent information.
  • If we’re debuting, mention our book and release date.
  • If we’re multi-published, mention some of our books.

My bio on this site is pretty generic, so I might use these suggestions to craft a more fun version and add that to the bio page. I also have a reading coming up in a few weeks–more on that later!–and need to come up with a version for the reading organizers to use. I’ll share my results on the blog.

Anyone else have good author bio tips or examples?

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