Here's an example of a bio, which I wrote as part of the book proposal for: 7
Days To Easy Money: Copywriting Success—(^)
Quick Bio^
Australian author and journalist Angela Booth has been writing successfully for 25
years. She writes about business, technology, women's issues, and creativity. Her
books include: LifeTime: Better Time Management in 21 Days, Home Sweet Office:
Your Home Office, Improve Your Memory in 21 Days, and Making the Internet Work
for Your Business. Her feature articles have appeared in magazines like Energy for
Women, The Australian Women's Weekly, Woman's Day, New Idea, Vogue, and
numerous other print and online magazines.
She's also a working copywriter, writing copy for businesses ranging from
international corporations to small businesses with less than five employees.
Your bio must be slanted so that it relates to those experiences which make you the
perfect person to write the book you're proposing. For example, let's say that in your
daily life you're a doctor. The book you're proposing is a gardening book: how to
grow your own organic vegetables. In your bio, might call yourself "Dr. Jane Smith",
but for this bio, you’d mention that you grew up on a farm, have grown organic
vegetables for ten years, and write a monthly column for Eat Your Organic Veggies
Magazine. Your experiences as a doctor wouldn’t be appropriate for this book. On
the other hand (just to confuse you), if you intended to cover the health and nutritional
benefits of organic vegetables at great length, then your credentials as a doctor would
be important, and you'd include them.
(^)
Please remember that there is no way you can do any of this wrong --- something
either works, or it doesn't. You can always make changes later, when you get
feedback.
Many of my writing students focus so much on the "correct" way of doing something,
that they never get anything done. Join any writing group, and discussions of correct
formatting abound. If you start to get nervous about anything you're doing, wondering
whether you're doing it "right", simply tell yourself: "this is the way I choose to do it.