Following on from my article Inventing The Author – Four Steps To Creating A Compelling Author Bio, here’s an analysis of the cover blurbs about five best-selling authors. (My comments are to the right of each blurb)
| Sphere Michael Crichton (science thriller) Michael Crichton was born in Chicago in 1942. He was educated at Harvard College and the Harbard Medical School and in 1969 was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. His novels include Rising Sun, Jurassic Park, Congo, The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, The Great Train Robbery, and Eaters of the Dead. He is the author of four works of nonfiction: Five Patients, Jasper Johns, Electronic Life and Travels. Among the films he has directed are Westworld, Coma and the movie version of his own The Great Train Robbery. In 1988 he was Visiting Writer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. | Even with all those credits to his name, he still puts his qualifications to write a science thriller first. |
| The Firm John Grisham (legal thriller) John Grisham, formerly a criminal defense attorney, is a graduate of Mississippi State University and Ole Miss Law School, and has also served two terms in the Mississippi House of Representatives. Also the author of A Time To Kill, he lives with his wife and two children on a farm near Oxford where he is at work on a new novel. | Without many writing credits, Grisham plays on the legal qualifications. He mentions A Time To Kill without mentioning that he self-published it. |
| She’s Come Undone Wally Lamb (literary fiction) Wally Lamb’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Pushcart Prize XV: Best of the Small Presses; The Best of the Missouri Review; Streetsongs 1; New Voices in Fiction; Northeast magazine; and The New York Times Magazine. He is the recipient of an NEA grant for fiction, and is a Missouri Review William Penden fiction prize winner. A nationally honored teacher of writing, Lamb lives in Connecticut with his wife and their three children. He is currently at work on his second novel. | He gets away with indicating that this is his first novel because of his voluminous publishing credits – not just the Missouri Review, but The Best of the Missouri Review!] |
| Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden (literary fiction/Japan/Historical) Arthur Golden was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee and was educated at Harvard College where he received a degree in art history, specializing in Japanese art. In 1980 he earned an MA in Japanese history from Columbia University, where he also learned Mandarin Chinese. Following a summer at Beijing University, he worked in Tokyo, and, after returning to the United States, earned an MA in English from Boston University. He resides in Brookline Massachusetts, with his wife and two children | Copious qualifications to write on Japanese/Eastern subjects that most readers will not know much about – both academic and life-experience. Also throws in a qualification in English, just in case you were worried he wasn’t serious about this writing thing. |
| Cold Mountain Charles Frazier (literary fiction/US Civil War/Historical) Charles Frazier grew up in North Carolina. He now lives in Raleigh with his wife and daughter where they raise horses. This is his first novel. | Short, sweet, to the point. He’s qualified to write about Southern country life, but unlike Golden (above) there is no mention of formal qualifications or research. Gets away with mentioning the 'first novel' thing because the book won a National Book Award and already had buzz. |
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