How to write an About the Author page, with examples

A self-published book needs three author bios, not one. There is the About the Author page in the back matter, usually 100 to 200 words. There is the biography on your Amazon author page, which you write in Author Central and which can run longer because it introduces you rather than a single book. And there is the back-cover or jacket bio, about fifty words, sharing the back cover with a barcode box that KDP will not let you print over.

All three answer the same question at different lengths: why should a reader trust this person with this book? Write the longest one properly and cut it down, rather than writing three versions that slowly drift apart.

Three bios, three jobs

	Back-matter page	Amazon author page	Back cover / jacket flap
Who reads it	Someone who just finished the book	A browser deciding whether to try you	A browser holding this book
Typical length	100–200 words	150–300 words	40–70 words
Person	Third, by convention	Third or first	Third
Links	Yes, in the ebook	No working links	None; a web address at most
How you change it	Republish the book	Edit in Author Central, any time	New cover file

The lengths and the person are conventions, not rules. The last row is the one that should shape what you write.

The back-matter page is read by someone who has just spent eight or ten hours with your voice and has earned the right to ask who wrote it. Their next decision is whether to read another of your books. The page sits in the order the back matter guide sets out: after the acknowledgements, before the also-by list and the teaser chapter.

The Amazon author page is set up through Author Central, which KDP describes as the place to “share the most up-to-date information about yourself and your books”. Your book has to be published before the page exists, and the biography can be added in more than one language. Amazon’s public help pages do not state a length limit for it; the field itself is behind sign-in. The guides that walk through it report a minimum of about 100 characters and plain text only, without bold, italics or clickable links. Because it is not attached to any one title, this is the version that can mention every series you write.

The back-cover bio has the least room and the hardest neighbor. KDP’s suggested barcode size is 2 × 1.2 inches on a solid white background, and Amazon states that “covers with images or text in the barcode location will be rejected.” After the description and perhaps a review quote, the bio usually gets a few lines at the bottom. It also goes into the cover file, which is the last thing finished, as explained in the cover guide, so it is the version most often written in a hurry.

Why third person

Bios are written in the third person because publishers wrote them. Jacket copy was publicity material, written by the publisher about its author, and the voice stayed after the job moved to authors.

The convention survived because it is practical. A third-person bio can be pasted into a press release, a bookstore event listing or a podcast’s show notes, or read aloud by the person introducing you, with no edits. “She spent eleven years as a ferry engineer” can be copied anywhere. “I spent eleven years as a ferry engineer” has to be rewritten every time someone else uses it.

It also makes credentials easier to state. “He has taught pistol marksmanship for twenty years” reads as information. In the first person the same fact sounds like a CV being read out.

First person is common on author websites, in newsletters and on Amazon author pages, and a memoirist whose whole book is in the first person can reasonably keep that voice. What reads badly is switching: a back-matter page in the third person followed by a newsletter note in the first is fine, but a bio that changes person halfway through is not.

What to put in it

A bio that works has three elements in roughly this order: why you, something human, and where next.

For fiction, the credential is the connection to the story rather than a list of publications. A crime novel set on the Great Lakes is helped by the fact that its author worked on the boats. A romance does not need a credential at all, but it benefits from a bio that sounds like the book: a warm one for a small-town series, a dry one for a romantic comedy. Then genre and series, so the reader knows whether your other books are for them: “the Harbor Light mysteries” tells them more than “several novels.” The same goes for a debut: nobody at the back of your first book is looking for a list of earlier ones.

For nonfiction, the credential carries the weight. Readers buying a book on hoof care or tax law want to know you have done the thing, how long for and at what level. Put it first, state it plainly, and give numbers where you have them: “has trimmed hooves professionally since 2009” is better than “is a passionate equine professional.” If the book grew out of a practice, a course or a blog with a following, say so, because it tells the reader where to go for more.

The human detail is the sentence most bios get wrong. “She lives in Vermont with her husband and two cats” is so common that it has become filler. A good detail connects to the book or shows how the author thinks: what you do on the days you are not writing, a place that keeps appearing in your fiction, the job that taught you to listen to dialogue. One detail is enough.

Where next is a website, a newsletter, or the next book. In print it is an address; in the ebook it is a link.

What to leave out

• The life story. Where you were born, your degree, and your childhood love of reading belong in the bio only if one of them explains the book.
• Anything that dates. “Is currently at work on her second novel” is true for a year and then makes your back list look abandoned. Ages (“a 34-year-old nurse”) and “recently” have the same problem.
• Adjectives about your own work. “Gripping,” “acclaimed” and “bestselling” need a source. If a credible one exists, quote it on the cover, where review quotes are conventional. Do not use it in your own description of yourself.
• Private details you will regret. Your street, your children’s names, your day job’s employer. A bio is published permanently, in every copy.

Sample bios

The author and her books below are invented, and so is the nonfiction author after her. The examples show the same facts at three lengths.

Back-matter page, about 120 words:

Ruth Vance spent eleven years as an engineer on the car ferries of Lake Michigan, where she learned that every vessel has one sound it makes only when something is about to go wrong. The Harbor Light mysteries began with that sound.

She lives in Ludington, Michigan, two streets from the water, and still checks the marine forecast before she checks the news. The Undertow Ledger is the third Harbor Light novel; the fourth, Signal at Point Sable, follows Inspector Dana Kell through the winter the ferries stop running.

Ruth writes a short letter to readers once a month, with the real places behind each book and a first look at new chapters. You can join at ruthvance.example.com.

Amazon author page, opening of a longer version:

Ruth Vance writes mysteries set on the Great Lakes, where she worked for eleven years as a ferry engineer. Her Harbor Light series, beginning with Dead Reckoning, follows Inspector Dana Kell through the harbor towns of western Michigan…

Back cover, 38 words:

Ruth Vance spent eleven years as a Lake Michigan ferry engineer before writing the Harbor Light mysteries. She lives in Ludington, Michigan, two streets from the water. The Undertow Ledger is the third novel in the series. ruthvance.example.com

Nonfiction, back-matter page:

Tomas Lind has worked as a farrier in central Kentucky since 2009, shoeing and trimming for pleasure barns, show stables and two racing yards. He teaches the hoof-care module of a continuing-education course for equine veterinarians, and the questions owners asked him after every visit became the outline of this book. He lives outside Versailles, Kentucky, with three horses he describes as “retired, opinionated and expensive.” His free checklists for owners are at tomaslind.example.com.

The credential comes first, it has numbers, the book’s origin is explained in one clause, and the human detail is about horses rather than cats.

The ebook back matter is a sales page

In an ebook, the About the Author page arrives at the moment a reader is most likely to buy another of your books. That is why the page and the also-by list after it should carry working links: to the next book, to the series, to your newsletter. The series guide explains why the next book goes first.

Each store’s file should link to that store. BookBub’s advice is to “customize the back matter for each retailer on which your book is available,” and Vellum builds its store links on the same idea: a Kindle reader is sent to Amazon, an Apple Books reader to Apple Books. Vellum also warns that putting a direct store link in the generic file you send to an aggregator “may cause your book to be rejected.” A newsletter link or a link to your own site’s books page is safe in every file.

A revised ebook does not reach readers who already bought it. KDP states that it is “unable to send content updates” to existing customers when you have “added, deleted, or changed links or marketing information.” Republish the book with a new bio and a longer also-by list, and only new buyers get it. Everyone who downloaded the old file keeps the old page, including its broken promise about “the fourth book, coming this spring.”

This is why the most durable link in an About the Author page points to an address you control. A store link to a book that does not exist yet will fail. A link to your website’s page for the series can be updated the day the book comes out, for every reader, in every edition, without republishing anything.

Keeping it current across a series

Every new book changes the bio in every earlier book: the series count, the latest title, sometimes the credential. Print and ebook editions of each volume have their own files, so a five-book series has ten copies of the page to keep in step, plus the Amazon author page, the back covers and whatever you gave an event organizer last year.

Three habits help:

• Keep one master bio in a file outside any book, at all three lengths, and paste from it. Never edit the version inside a book first.
• Write it so it ages slowly. “The Harbor Light mysteries” stays true longer than “her three novels.” Name the series, not the count, and let the also-by page carry the list.
• Update at each release. When a new book goes live, republish the ebooks of the earlier volumes with the new also-by entry and the current bio, then edit the Amazon author page. Upload a new paperback cover only when the bio on it has become wrong, not merely incomplete.

Some aggregators automate part of this. Draft2Digital’s generated end matter includes an About the Author page built from your profile, and the company announced that “when you update your author profile… we’ll automatically update them in your books, where appropriate.” That covers the books you distribute through it, not the files you upload directly to KDP.

In Nueel, About the author and Also by are their own section roles in the book’s back matter, so they stay in the conventional order and are styled with the rest of the book. Keeping them current across volumes is still your job, and the master bio is still a separate file.

Before you publish it

Read the back-matter version as someone who just finished the book: does it say why you wrote it and what to read next? Read the cover version as someone who has never heard of you. Count both with the word counter.

The version that lasts longest is the one at the back of an ebook, because every reader keeps the copy they downloaded. Write it so it is still true when your fifth book comes out.

Sources

• Amazon KDP, Author Central and Author Page — what the author page shows, biographies in several languages, a book must be published first, marketplaces covered. Read 8 October 2026.
• Amazon KDP, Barcodes — suggested 2 × 1.2 inch size, solid white background, covers with text in the barcode location rejected. Read 8 October 2026.
• Amazon KDP, How to send your updated eBook to customers — no content updates to existing customers for changed links or marketing information. Read 8 October 2026.
• Kindlepreneur, How to create an author page in Amazon Author Central — secondary source for the biography field’s 100-character minimum and plain-text, no-link format; Amazon’s public help pages do not state these. Read 8 October 2026.
• BookBub Partners, How to add links to your ebook’s back matter — retailer-specific back matter. Read 8 October 2026.
• Vellum, Store Link — store-specific links and the rejection warning for generic files. Read 8 October 2026.
• Draft2Digital, New and improved automated end-matter (19 October 2017) — automatic updates to author bios in books distributed through Draft2Digital. Read 8 October 2026.

Common questions

How long should an About the Author page be?

For the page at the back of the book, 100 to 200 words is the conventional range: long enough for one credential, one human detail and one place to find you, short enough to fit on a single page in print. The back-cover version is much shorter, around 50 words, and your Amazon author page can run longer than either, because it introduces you rather than one book.

Should an author bio be in first or third person?

Third person, by convention, for the book and the cover. Publishers wrote jacket copy about their authors, and a bio in the third person can be pasted into a press release, a festival program or a host's introduction without being rewritten. Nothing requires it. First person is common on author websites, in newsletters and on Amazon author pages, and it is fine there if you use it consistently.

What should I include in an author bio if this is my first book?

Whatever connects you to the book, which for a debut is rarely a list of publications. For fiction, a detail of your life that the story draws on; for nonfiction, the experience that qualifies you to write it. Then one fact about where you live or what you do, and where readers can find you. Do not apologize for the missing credits; a debut is not a gap the reader is looking for.

Can I put links in my Amazon author bio?

Not working ones. Guides that walk through Author Central consistently report that the biography field takes plain text only, with no formatting or hyperlinks, so a web address there has to be typed out by the reader. Working links belong in the ebook's back matter, where the reader can tap them.

If I update the bio in my ebook, do readers who already bought it see the change?

Generally not. KDP states it is unable to send content updates to existing customers when the change is to links or marketing information, so a revised bio or a new also-by list reaches new buyers only. Readers who bought earlier keep the version they downloaded. That is a reason to point to an address you control rather than to a store page for a book that does not exist yet.