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)
| The New Relocating Spouse’s Guide to Employment Frances Bastress (human resource nonfiction) Francess Bastress has spent nearly three decades in the human resource development field, working in private industry, government, academia and nonprofit organizations. A former personnel administrator in private industry and a certified career counselor, she has designed and conducted employment-related training programs for a variety of audiences. She wrote the Spouse Employment Workshop Manual – used worldwide by the Army, Navy and Air Force – and is author of Teachers in New Careers: Stories Successful Transitions. | Plays on professional experience more than academic qualifications. Mentions organizations she has worked (ones the reader will have heard of). |
| Customers.com – How to Create a Profitable Business Strategy For the Internet and Beyond Patricia B. Seybold with Ronni T. Marshak (business nonfiction) Patricia B. Seybold is the founder and CEO of the Boston-based Patricia Seybold Group, a worldwide business and technology consulting firm. Its clients include Ameritech, Arthur Andersen, Clorox, Hewlett Packard, the International Monteary Fund, Microsoft, State Street Bank and Warburg Pincus. | A consultant with information to share. Mentions big-name companies she has worked with. No mention of any other writing experience, but that’s OK, because of the information she has to share. |
| Re-Creating The Corporation – A Design of Organizations for the 21st Century Russell L. Ackoff (business nonfiction) Russell L. Ackoff has spent most of his adult life thinking about how organizations work – and, more importantly, how they should work. His early pioneering studies of operations research set him on the path of thinking of organizations as systems in which all the essential parts are interrelated, and any change that is made to one part will inevitably change the rest. He has explored the implications of that seemingly simple, but profound, idea in a number of boks on the modern organization and its ills. He has been called ‘one of the world’s most innovative and insightful organizational thinkers’ (Noel Tichy). Now emeritus at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, he is chair of Interact: The Institute for Interactive Management, a firm dedicated to education, research, and consulting that he co-founded. | Really interesting academic bio. I’m including it because it is chatty, and introduces you briefly to the author’s thesis (that he will be expanding on in this book). Also notes that he is associated with a prestigious institution and co-founded a company – all good qualifications for his subject matter. |
| The Bridge At Andau James A. Michener (political/current events nonfiction) James A. Michener personally helped many to escape after the Battle of Budapest, and interviewed hundreds more in the blazing white heat of one of history’s great moments. Here is the thrilling story of Hungary’s revolution, told through the eyes of the people who made it, written with impassioned eloquence by a truly great writer | A mix of bio and description, this adequately explains why you might want to read this writer’s account. He was there and someone is calling him 'truly great'. |
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