Is Your Bio "Voicey"?

Diana Urban did this piece for the BookBub Partners blog, Writing Your Author Bio? Here Are 20 Great Examples. (Plus a Checklist!)

The examples are fun to check out, and on their checklist they have the suggestion to:

Make it Voicey!
Once the info’s there, add a unique flair to your bio to convey your personality. Make it uniquely yours!

And I think it's not just about conveying YOUR personality, but also the tone of your book(s). 

It's probably a useful exercise to look at 10-20 recently published books in your category that you loved, and see what they did for the author bio (or illustrator or translator bio - this applies to all of us!)

I've seen illustrators and authors customize their author/illustrator photo for specific books, which is always fun - so the idea of making the voice of the bio match a specific book seems like an opportunity more of us could take.

One tip a book marketing pro taught me for my debut YA is if you don't have a lot of accolades (yet), you can use snippets from reader reviews in your bio. Here's what we came up with for that sentence: 

QUEER AS A FIVE-DOLLAR BILL is Lee's debut novel, and readers describe it as "a love letter for history geeks" that "perfectly captures teen angst," "had my heart racing," and helped them feel "less alone."

Maybe the most important point is to recognize is that your bio can (and probably should) change over time. You'll have more books, more accolades, more experience, and if we see our bio as something that's iterative, it also takes some of the pressure off needing to get it "perfect."

Consider: What's your favorite author/illustrator/translator bio? And how can that inspire you to improve yours?

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee