We are going to get to your back cover, your bios and your book descriptions this week. You need some different options to put different places depending on length.

Your author bio is going to go a few different places. You need a short blurb for the back cover if you are doing a physical book, many books also contain a bio on one of the back pages of the book. You don't have to if your back cover suffices. For Kindle, you should have something there. You'll also need one for your Amazon author page and your website.

Now, your book cover bio needs to be short, sweet and relevant to the book. 2-3 sentences. No "where you live/how many pets you have." You'll want to finish this off with your business website address.

For your other bios, you can be a bit more detailed, but you still need to stay fairly relevant. Consider your audience. My Dream Ventures bio is vastly different than my Freedom Flowers bio. It doesn't need to be everything about you. It can include:

Professional background
Your business or profession
Achievements/awards
Previous books
Personal details - I'd be careful here and ask the "would your audience care" question.
Contact info and a call to action

Shorter is always better.

"Serial entrepreneur Seneca Schurbon combines sound business strategy with intuitive insight to help others launch and build their own business. Seneca gives spiritually minded entrepreneurs the next practical step, rather than subjecting them to drink from the firehose of typical business methodology."

Contrasted with Put your most important facts first, assume that with every word, fewer and fewer people will be reading. When all else fails, just tell em exactly what it is you do.

"Seneca Schurbon was encouraged from an early age to follow her business dreams. She has founded 7 businesses ranging from retail, entertainment, to the service industry and freelancing. Some of her mentors and teachers have been Ryan Eliason, Sandi Krakowski and Bill Baren, among others. She is a voracious reader of marketing books and Entrepreneur Magazine. She currently resides in North Idaho with her husband and dog."

In addition to the first one being shorter, it's also better because it positions me as just the person to give my audience the benefits they want. It's also a whole lot better than telling them that I've basically failed my way into all this knowledge and have no real education.

Your other project this week should be a snap after writing your intro. You need a back cover blurb.

Ok, so if you have a review or testimonial from a well known person, or a highly credentialed source, that goes at the top of your back cover. You can die happy.

Everybody else, put your headline at the top. Do not just repeat your book title there. This is the place to put your book's main benefit or to ask a compelling emotional question.

This should be followed by your short powerful pitch, a very condensed version of what you said in the intro. Say what they'll learn, what problems you solve and why you're different. 4-6 bullet points. Wham bam.

Bio goes underneath that and you're also going to need a professional photo to go with it. I thought out my color scheme for the cover design, and took my own in a suitable setting so that it jives with the rest of my book cover. (See the bio photo section in the Websites class.) If you aren't using strong colors, it won't matter as much.

Go ahead and write your bio and blurb, post here and let us see if we can make it better. It's hard to write your own bio!

Bios and Blurbs

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