How to Write an Author Bio with No Experience

So you need to write a biographical note for your query letter, but you don’t have any authorial accolades to brag about. That sounds like a problem…but it doesn’t have to be. Here’s the secret:

Publishers aren’t reading author bios to separate the experienced from the inexperienced. Instead, they want to know why you’re the right author for the book you’ve written.

Showing that you have a pre-built audience or recognized writing skill is one way to demonstrate that, but it isn’t the only way. Sometimes life experience that connects to your book’s subject matter is a stronger hook. In this post, I’m going to help you write a debut author bio that helps sell you and your manuscript.

Here’s your first tip: being a new author isn’t a bad thing. The book industry is more excited by newcomers who are bursting with potential than by those of us who have published a few books but never become bestsellers. Own your debut status and enjoy the possibilities.

Part I: Brainstorming

Let’s start brainstorming fodder for your bio. Begin by jotting down answers to the following questions. Don’t worry about whether they sound “right” or impressive. We’re just getting content on paper for now.

1. Why did you write this book?

This is often the most important question, especially if the answer is that you’re writing to meet a concrete need you’ve noticed: I grew up thinking I was broken, and I want other ace teens to know they’re not alone.

2. What are the key subjects and themes of the book? What life experiences, education, or expertise are you drawing from when you write about those subjects and themes?

If you have concrete answers for this question, that means you have solid authority that the publisher will gladly brag about to sales reps, review journals, etc.: The motorcycle subplot draws on my years as a mechanic. The curse on my character’s mother takes inspiration from my experience growing up with a chronically ill parent.

3. Do you have any experience at all with writing for journals, magazines, contests, etc.?

Don’t panic if you don’t. But any amount of writing history can help show that you’re serious about your craft.

4. Where did you grow up? Are there other places you’ve lived long enough to form connections in the community?

These questions are for the benefit of sales reps and anyone else involved in regional marketing. It’s much easier to sell a book by a local author, even if the author now lives somewhere else. In the behind-the-scenes “metadata” the publisher creates for your book, each of these locations will be listed as a “place relator” so that bookstores’ digital systems will easily let them know whether you have a connection to their region.

5. Where did you go to school/training, and what for?

If you went to a post-secondary institution of any kind, the sales rep that serves their campus bookstore will want to know. Your area of study may or may not be relevant to your book, but write it down for now. If you instead got training another way, write that down too.

6. Do any past jobs relate to what you’ve written about?

This can be another way to show authority on your subject matter.

7. What do you do now?

Whether or not this is relevant to your subject matter, it’s information that helps people form a picture of you in their minds.

8. Where do you live, and with whom?

Here’s another place relator, paired with some human-interest information. You don’t have to get more specific than “with her family” if you don’t want to, but you can also have fun with this: He lives in an aggressively maximalist Toronto loft with six artist roommates and a spoiled pug named Wubbles.

9. What’s a fun fact you’d like to leave the reader with?

When you don’t have a ton of information to give about your writing career, you can always flesh out a bio with a fun fact that lets your personality shine through. Naming a hobby is often an easy choice: When they aren’t writing, they like to take part in yarn bombing and guerilla gardening.

Part II: Writing

Now that you have all your brainstorming notes, look them over to identify which answers feel the most relevant to your book. If some of them don’t feel relevant at all, strike them out. For example, if you once spent ten years working as an accountant, that wouldn’t necessarily help you sell a spicy pirate romance.  

As you write, think about the tone of your manuscript. Is it sarcastic? Serious? Sweet? Whatever it is, match that tone in your bio (and in your plot summary, but that’s another post). Aim for about 100 words.

Here’s an Example

To put this post to the test, I asked a friend to go through the exercise of answering my nine questions, keeping in mind a quirky book idea of hers about a cybernetic cat who loves video games. Here’s the anonymized bio we wrote from her answers:

Lola Larkspur is a library assistant and former video game designer with a love of snarky science fantasy. She grew up in Metropolis with a cat named Mr. Pickles (who got into plenty of mischief without cybernetics and AI) and graduated from the Metro Film School’s Videogame Design & Development program. Like her main character, Lola would rather nap in a sunbeam than go out to save the world, but she’ll do anything, grumpily, for her friends. Lola lives at the edge of a forest with the beautiful fae tricker she married.

That’s a fanciful example, but if it matches the tone of the book, then it works. Her literary connections and videogame expertise come through, as does the personality of her writing—a major selling point for this kind of book. Do you want to read more by Lola after reading her bio? As a fellow fan of snarky science fantasy and cats, I sure do!

A note on AI

You might be thinking that an easy way forward will be to take your questions and answers and plug them into ChatGPT, asking it to craft your bio for you. That’s something you have the power to do, certainly. But it will probably write too much and pad your bio with invented details. You can coach it into something better, but be aware that because AI-generated content can’t be copyrighted (and because of the copyright abuse involved in AI models’ training), publishers are requiring that authors not use it at all for their manuscripts. It’s a fair assumption that using it for any part of your submission is pushing your luck.

In the spirit of discovery, we did test what ChatGPT would do with Lola’s answers. Here’s what it gave us, with the invented-out-of-thin-air parts in red:

As someone who has written dozens of bios for other people, I can tell you that getting those linking phrases right takes conversation and nuance. You’ll probably be better at doing it for yourself than letting a language-learning model fill in the gaps!

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