You’re Only Impressing Yourself (No One Else is Looking)

We love the sound of our voice, and we love our own life story, and we love listing our accomplishments. But do other people love hearing about all that?

Many people talk about how there’s not much practical advice out there and when it is practical, it’s usually something they’ve heard a million times. Well here’s some practical advice that, as far as I’m concerned, is underplayed. I’ll get right to the point:

When you’re writing an author bio, don’t set out to do a masterpiece; save that for your next novel. You have to remember that with most books, unless you’re a celebrity, people really don’t care about you until they like the book. Then they want to know about you. However, they want to hear about you in an everyday way. They don’t want the most poetic, flowery description of a human being that was ever written. I’ll let you in on a secret…they roll their eyes at that kind of thing.

Image by Med Ahabchane

I had a friend who’s a writer and she asked me to shorten her author bio. She felt it was too long. Well, at two pages, I sort of had to agree with her! The problem is, she tried to include everything she’d ever done in her life in one author bio. Well, since she was 54 years old, that was quite a bit. And she should absolutely be proud of every single accomplishment. But if you asked me if all that belongs in the biography, the answer is no.

For instance, I speak four languages, I’m ambidextrous, I have three college degrees and have visited 50 states and 13 countries. As pretentious as all that sounds, it’s the truth. However, I would sleep on a bed of nails before I would put it in an author bio. After people finished reading it, they would wonder why I didn’t also include a video clip of live applause, confetti and brass bands.

It just doesn’t work. As I said, there’s nothing wrong with being proud of our accomplishments, we just have to be careful where we toot the horn, and an author bio is not the place.

You also shouldn’t say anything in a bio that you wouldn’t say live in an interview. Read over your author bio and say it out loud as if you are answering the question “tell us a little about yourself.” Does it sound ridiculously poetic and flowery? Then you shouldn’t have it in your bio that way either.

Make your author bio primarily about your writing and pepper in little tidbits about yourself that would be interesting to the everyday reader. Write about things like authors you looked up to when you were learning the craft, how you think about words and their impact on people, what you hope to accomplish with your works in progress, and a little bit of what you like to do in your spare time. It may sound boring, but those are the things people are really interested in. Not a dissertation about everything you’ve ever accomplished, a list of your degrees, or nine dramatic adjectives to describe who you are. At the end of the day, writers are just people like everyone else, and that’s kind of what readers are hoping for. Make your bio reflect that and it’ll be a much bigger hit! Write on!