You may think you don’t need to focus on writing an author bio – but you would be wrong. It’s just like a resume – once your readers have tried a taste of your book, they’ll want to know more about you. If there’s nothing – they may find you unapproachable. Nowadays, the public likes to feel connected with their favorite celebrities – whether they are actors, writers, or musicians. Like it or not, once you’ve put something out there into the world and people like it, they’ll want to know about the brains behind it all.
Unless you are writing a self-help book or tax-deduction strategies for real estate investors – you can have fun with your bio. You should make sure your tone matches the tone of your book. You would figure this as a given, but there are some horror writers whose bio talks their love of cute fluffy bunnies – too much disconnect can give your reader whiplash.
While I could go through exact boring lists of what you should and shouldn’t do, I figured we would have more fun just going through mine and I’ll explain why I wrote the crazy that I did. Shall we?
Mari is a half-Peruvian, half-American hobbit and pug owner who was born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana where she grew up writing Sailor Moon/Gundam Wing fanfiction. She studied biology and Spanish at Indiana University where she decided to revive an old space opera she wrote in her high school years.
A lot of authors plug where they came from and where they got some of their inspiration. Because I state later that I am both a Hoosier (someone from Indiana) living in Germany – I didn’t want folks to think that I was German simply because I live there. If you follow me on ANY of my social media platforms, you would know that having Abner was my fur baby is a HUGE part of my identity. My mentioning of Sailor Moon and Gundam Wing is to show that 1. I am a geek and 2. My debut novel was influenced by my writing in my younger years. Mentioning that I studied biology was to lend some credibility as to why I chose to write a space opera.
A native Hoosier, Mari now lives in southern Germany where she entertains people with her adventures as an American expat in the Land of Beer and Pretzels on her blog adventuresoflamari.com as well as making sure the world knows her pug, Abner, exists. When she’s not writing, Mari cooks, snowboards, dances to the beat of her own drum, reads late into the night, and binge watches a good story unfold on Netflix with her husband. The God Queen is her debut novel.
The next part explains what I do when I am not writing my space opera: expat blogging, gifting the world with Abner’s existence, other actions that prove I am human and not just a writing machine and yet I do have years of experience in writing. And lastly – The God Queen is my debut novel. Once I write more books – that last part will likely change, but for now that last sentence is there to bring everything around full circle to why my author bio is suddenly showing up everywhere….so you know about my novel!
Once you have perfected your author bio – you will need to make a shorter one for Amazon. While you will have an author page – your book ordering page will have a tiny section for an author bio. The goal is to take a few highlights from the big one and make it bite size:
Mari lives in southern Germany with her husband and pug, Abner, where she regales others of her adventures as an expat in the Land of Beer and Pretzels. The God Queen is her first novel.
Keep it short and sweet, most people will likely read over this so don’t worry about putting too much. It would be best to have a full author page on Amazon where you can really shine.
Anyway, that’s how I did my author bio. It’s a little off the wall, I know, but I think it works.
What about the rest of you? What did you do for your author bios?
In the meantime, if you follow me on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook – you probably already know this. If you want a behind the scenes peek of my upcoming novel, The God Queen, then sign up for my newsletter! Just click the subscribe button below!
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