Writing an Author Bio

The author bio is an important place to provide additional detail and context on the author, both in relation to a given title or topic and more broadly in terms of an author’s career, life, and other works. Author bios help establish author branding and impact search engine for the author and their books.

Best Practices & Guidelines

Your author biography should highlight notable attributes and help potential readers, buyers, and fans understand who the author is and all the things they are connected with.

Information to include

• Qualifications, experience, and background
  Who is the author/illustrator? What are they known for? What gives them authority for this book/topic? Consider including the author’s country or hometown, important credentials and training, and other relevant experience.
  
  
• Books, reception, and success
  What other work has he/she done? How have prior books (or other writing) been received? Mention major awards, bestseller status, and most popular and recent works by the author.

• Related properties and affiliations
  What else has the author or illustrator done? Who or what are they connected to/associated with? Include other works, media, or businesses they are involved with and associations (either institutional or personal).

• Other activities
  Anything else that potential readers may find of interest? Consider including hobbies and other personal details/interests.

Where to use your author bio

Include an author bio on key consumer-facing platforms and any profile, page, or site that you can. Bios across different sites and channels should be differentiated from one another whenever possible.

• Title metadata
  Submit a contributor biography for all contributors to a work. These bios should be relatively short (50-150 words long) and focus in particular on expanding on the author’s work and expertise in relation to this book and this This should complement any author information included in the book description.
  
  
• Retail channels
  In addition to the contributor bio that’s distributed along with your title data, take advantage of managed author profile opportunities like Amazon Author Central to include additional context and information across an author’s works.
  
  
• Book and community sites
  Sites like Goodreads and LibraryThing may include crowdsourced data and detail about an author. You should manage those presences to control and optimize the information about the author, and include a bio that speaks the audience on each platform. Your Goodreads bio may be more friendly and personal, while LibraryThing bios should more typically stick to “just the facts.”
  
  
• Wikipedia
  Follow Wikipedia guidelines and keep biographical information here as neutral and objective as possible, with citations to prominent media and the publisher site if possible.
  
  
• Social profiles
  Fill in ‘bio’ and ‘about’ fields wherever you can. These are often quite short and limited and should be updated as needed to reflect latest titles, news, and promotions.
  
  
• Author and publisher-owned websites
  Include a detailed, extensive author biography on owned and controlled sites where possible. This should be the authoritative source for information on the author, their life, and works.