Your author bio is an important online press room element because it’s the only tool you have to make the case that you are the best person to write this book and to write it well.

This information is just as important for reporters, producers, bloggers, and meeting planners as it is for readers. They all need to know that your professional and personal history offer excellent credentials for your novel or nonfiction book.

A press kit bio is longer

While your book cover and sales page bio should be only two or three sentences, a good press kit bio can be longer if it makes sense. (I generally recommend that you write a long bio for your press kit first, then pull a short version for your cover and sales pages from that.)

But just because longer is okay doesn’t mean it should represent your life story. I’m often discouraged by the number of authors who write 1,000 words or more, beginning with something like this:

Joseph Smith was born in Tulsa, Ok., in 1970, the youngest of John and Mary Smith’s three children. His family moved to St. Louis, Mo., when he was 4. There, he attended Catholic schools, receiving the “best hair” award in his senior yearbook. He attended Madison College, where he met his wife, Annie. It was love at first sight. 

Unless these details are relevant to his book – if, for example, the book is set in St. Louis or about parochial education or men’s hairstyles – not much of this tells us why he’s the right author for this story.

Why are you qualified to write this book?

Whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction, your author bio should focus on why you’re the best person to write this book because that, in turn, will tell us that:

• You know what you’re talking about.
• You’ve written a book that people will want to read.

Can it be entertaining? Sure, if that’s appropriate for your subject matter.

Can it be boring? For a press kit, that’s okay too, as long as the relevant information is there. The emphasis on press kit elements is relevant facts. Press kits are about news, not entertainment.

What to include

What should you include? Present any information that demonstrates your credentials to write this book. For nonfiction authors, that’s usually:

• Education
• Work experience
• Professional memberships
• Industry leadership roles
• Industry awards

For fiction writers, consider:

• Information that explains how you came to write this story – perhaps where or how you grew up, or your work experience
• Writing awards or acclaim
• Previously published works, including short stories and anthologies
• Fiction workshops or training programs you’ve presented to other writers

What to omit

What should you leave out?

Here’s a little tough love: We don’t care that you’ve dreamed about writing a book all your life.

Most authors have always wanted to write a book. That’s not unusual or special. In fact, as the self-publishing industry has grown, it’s become something of a cliché in bios.

And, really, as readers, we’re less interested in your dreams and more interested in how your book will contribute to ours.

With that in mind, keep the focus on why you’re qualified to write the book. Omit random details that don’t add to your credentials. (You might find a home for them on your website “About” page, though.)

Examples

Examples help, don’t they?

Nonfiction

Here’s one for nonfiction writer Mark Harris, author of Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial.

Mark Harris is a former environmental columnist with the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. His articles and essays have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Reader’s Digest, E: The Environmental Magazine, Hope, and Vegetarian Times. His profile of a foster care community for Chicago Parent won a journalism award for feature writing. He is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists. Mark lives with his family in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

For Grave Matters, Mark has been interviewed by Fresh Air host Terry Gross and appeared on CNN, MSNBC, ABC News and the CBC. His views on green burial and funeral matters have been reported on in the New York Times, USA Today, the Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, and People magazine, among others. Working with the board of the Fountain Hill Cemetery in eastern Pennsylvania, he established the first natural burial ground in the Lehigh Valley, Green Meadow.

He speaks regularly to college students, church congregations, hospice workers, home funeral providers, consumer-friendly funeral advocates, and funeral directors about green burial and funeral issues.

A graduate of Stetson University and the University of Chicago, Mark is an adjunct instructor at Moravian College and a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow. His current book project focuses on green homebuilding.

You can see why Mark’s bio works well for his subject matter. It’s straightforward and professional, as it should be.

Fiction

Novelists are often better able to have a little fun with their bios, providing that a lighter tone is a good fit for the book and its subject matter. You can see novelist Travis Heerman’s personality peeking out of his bio:

Freelance writer, novelist, award-winning screenwriter, editor, poker player, poet, biker, roustabout, Travis Heermann is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop and the author of Tokyo Blood Magic, The Hammer Falls, The Ronin Trilogy, and co-author of Death Wind, plus short fiction pieces in anthologies and magazines such as Straight Outta Deadwood, Apex Magazine, Alembical, the Fiction River anthology series, Historical Lovecraft, and Cemetery Dance’s Shivers VII. As a freelance writer, he has produced a metric ton of role-playing game work both in print and online, including the Firefly Roleplaying Game, Battletech, Legend of Five Rings, d20 System, and the MMORPG, EVE Online.

He has a Bachelor of Science in Engineering, a Master of Arts in English, and teaches science fiction literature at the University of Nebraska Omaha. He has presented workshops on writing and publishing at the Odyssey Writing Workshop, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, Pike’s Peak Writers Conference, and Colorado Gold Writers Conference, and regularly appears at conventions across the U.S.

He enjoys cycling, martial arts, torturing young minds with otherworldly ideas, and monsters of every flavor, especially those with a soft, creamy center. He has three long-cherished dreams: a produced screenplay, a NYT best-seller, and a seat in the World Series of Poker.

Mark and Travis use different approaches to communicate that their author credentials are excellent. You also get a sense of each author’s personality, which is helpful.

When writing yours, focus on facts and relevance and skip the life history unless you have a solid reason to include it. Your author bio isn’t an encyclopedia entry. It’s a sales tool.

Resources

Before writing yours, be sure to also read “Avoid these 4 author bio mistakes” on this site.

Need more help? Build Book Buzz Publicity Forms & Templates has a template and author bio example. It includes templates and samples for all other author press kit materials, too.

Proud of your press kit bio? Link to it in a comment!

(Editor’s note: This article was first published in July 2011. It has been updated and expanded.)

I use the word “easiest” because you probably have the press kit elements you need already. If you don’t, you certainly have the information you need to create them – you just need to do some editing and tweaking to put that material into the right format.

Not familiar with the concept? An online press room is a home for information the press and bloggers need to write about you and your book.

Here’s why you need one and what you need to include.

4 reasons to have a press room

Whether you label your press materials on your toolbar as “press room,” “for the press,” or “media materials,” your online press kit serves several purposes. They include:

• It gives journalists everything they need to report on or reference your book, often without needing to contacting you.
• It leads journalists to you when they’re looking for interview sources.
• It boosts your site’s search engine optimization (SEO), that process that helps your site show up when people search for terms related to your book.
• It provides readers with information that could help them decide that your book is exactly what they need.

Must-have and nice-to-have elements

Here are eight elements you’ll want to include in your online press kit.

1. Author bio

Is this on your book’s jacket flap or back cover already? Just copy and paste.

A two- to three-paragraph biography is enough. Journalists don’t need your life story. (Be careful not to make these four author bio mistakes, though.)

2. Book announcement press release

This versatile tool helps people understand your book’s value. When writing yours, include an objective description, information on why people will benefit from reading it, your author credentials, and how to purchase it.

Haven’t written one before, or you’ve written one but it isn’t working hard enough for you? I’ve got detailed, step-by-step instructions in Get Your Book in the News: How to Write a Press Release That Announces Your Book.

3. Author photo

Provide a professional, current author photo in a JPG format that journalists and bloggers can save and use. Offer it in both high- and low-resolution versions.

This needs to be a high-quality image, not a selfie you took with your phone. Get tips on how to get an affordable head shot in “Get a better author photo without spending a fortune.”

4. Book cover image

Media outlets and bloggers will want to use your book cover as an illustration, so make it possible for them to do so without contacting you for the image.

As with your author photo, offer it in both high- and low-resolution versions.

5. Author Q&A

The question-and-answer list is particularly popular with radio talk show hosts. These busy people don’t have time to read guest books, so they rely on publicity materials you provide.

Include answers with your questions. Doing so gives all interviewers, whether they’re from a radio station, popular blog, or magazine, a sense of your viewpoint and depth of knowledge.

6. Optional fact sheet

If you find yourself continually referring to specific details during conversations about your book (with the media or others), summarize them in a fact sheet. It will save you – and them – time, and will contribute to your SEO.

List the facts with bullets.

7. Optional tip sheet

A tip sheet is a type of news release that offers tips or advice in a bulleted or numbered format. It’s used by both fiction and nonfiction authors to get widespread media and blog exposure.

Get a sense of how to write them, and how they get used, in the article “4 tips to show seniors you care during the coronavirus” on the USA Today site.

8. Optional quiz

Could you create a quiz or two related to your book’s topic?

Magazines, newspapers, bloggers, and radio talk show hosts like them, so give them what they want. They’re fun to create, too.

How you present your online press kit

Present your written information in a format that can be copied and pasted. That’s not necessarily PDF files. When copied and pasted, some PDF text loses its formatting, which makes it useless.

Either make it available as text — just like the text on your other website pages — or as a Word file.

Author Candy Harrington’s press room for her book, 22 Accessible Road Trips: Driving Vacations for Wheelers and Slow Walkers, is an excellent example of how you want to do this. At that link, select “press release,” then click on each option.

If you need help creating these materials, check out my popular author workbook, Build Book Buzz Publicity Forms & Templates. This time-saving resource that includes instructions for creating these elements and many other publicity tools used by authors features fill-in-the blanks forms and samples for everything.

What’s in your author press room? Please share a link to it, too!   

(Editor’s note: This article was first published in August 2012. It has been updated and expanded.)

If you’re looking for book publicity — free media exposure — you have to:

• Have an author press kit on your website
• Include the right elements with the right information
• Present it in a format that’s easy for all journalists to use

Are you making any of these common author press kit mistakes that are interfering with your ability to effectively promote your book? Don’t worry if you are — all of these can be fixed easily:

1. You don’t have an online press room with an author press kit.

Get out! No press room? No press kit? No media information? You need to read “Must-have online press room elements for authors and books” before you go any further.

Actually, most authors don’t have one, which means those who do are light years ahead of their competition when it comes to priceless book publicity.

When I’m looking for an expert author to interview for a magazine article assignment and have two choices, which one do you think I’ll contact — the one with a press kit or the one without? When I see an online press kit, I think, “This person wants to be interviewed. I won’t have to talk him into it.”

Unless you’re trying to hide from the press, you need one. It’s expected; it’s useful.

2. Your press materials are only in PDF format.

Here’s the problem with PDFs: You want journalists to copy and paste your press releases, fact sheets, bios, etc. In many cases, when someone copies text from a PDF and drops it into Word or another program, all formatting is lost. The journalist has to manually insert paragraph returns and so on.

That’s a problem.

So you want your press materials available in a format that lets people copy and paste easily. That’s plain text in the same way that the text on your “about” page is plain text.

Ditch the PDFs, even though you see publishers and publicists using them. They create problems.

Candy Harrington’s press rooms for each of her books are great examples of how to do it the right way. You’ll see how easy it is to copy and paste the text.

3. There’s no date on your press releases.

When your book announcement press release doesn’t have a date, I don’t know if the book is new or three years old.

Perhaps you’ve got a press release listing your bookstore appearances, but you haven’t included the year. A journalist compiling a local calendar of events won’t be able to use the information without taking extra steps to confirm that it’s current. As soon as you force reporters to take unnecessary steps, you lose them.

4. You don’t provide contact information.

This is incredibly common, probably because it doesn’t occur to you that someone might want to contact you for an interview or to ask a few questions.

Picture this*: A local network TV affiliate is searching online for local romance authors for a new twist on the usual Valentine’s Day segment.

The reporter finds your site, is thrilled to see that you have a press room, but can’t find your contact information on that section of your site, in your press releases, or on your site at all, for that matter (another common problem).

That will probably cost you that publicity opportunity.

5. There are no images.

Not that you need a lot of them, but you do need your book cover and an author head shot.

Make them available in both high-resolution (“high res” is 300 dpi or greater) and low-resolution (“low res” is less than 300 dpi) versions. Publications need high-res images; bloggers and websites like low-res.

6. You haven’t clearly identified the press room where you house your author press kit.

Label it clearly on your toolbar.

Title options include:

• Press Room
• Press Kit
• For the Media
• For the Press
• Newsroom

Many authors, experts, and others have a section identified as “Media,” which tricks journalists into thinking that they’ll find press kit elements there. What they find instead are reprints or links to articles or segments that include an interview with the author. That’s good — reporters like knowing that their interview won’t be your first — but it’s misleading.

If you have a “media” page that showcases your publicity success but doesn’t have press materials, add them so you’re both serving and attracting journalists.

Make sure you create an online press kit and house it in on your website so that you not only support your publicity efforts, but so that you improve your site’s search engine optimization — SEO — too.

Avoid mistakes by using templates

Need help creating your online press kit? “Build Book Buzz Publicity Forms & Templates” has a template and sample for every author press kit element, from your book announcement press release to your bio and sample question and answer sheet.

Learn more at http://buildbookbuzz.com/publicity-forms-and-templates/.

What do you call your online press room? Tell us in a comment.

_{*Channeling my inner Sophia Petrillo}