on Anne R. Allen:

If you Google author bios you will find a million different articles, each with their own recommendation. Be short and too the point. Use the third person. Simply say who you are, and give your publishing credits. Be formulaic.

A lot of this advice is good, but I also think it is incomplete.

Back in the fall of 2018 I attended a Meetup hosted by Robin Sullivan, wife and business manager of fantasy author Michael Sullivan, where she covered the topic of author branding (the following post draws heavily upon her presentation). One of the points she raised was how to write an author bio. Robin argues that authors need more than just the one bio because they are going to be used for more than one purpose.

I used what she said as the inspiration for a blog post which I published in October of that year, and in the two years since I have turned that blog post into a workbook and a presentation.

The post you are about to read has been revised and updated to include all I learned in the past couple years.