I recently got a publicity email from Clean Teen Reads that caught my attention. First off, I have to mention that the cover of one of the books featured was the first thing that caught my eye. I get promo emails from publishers all the time, and I often just kind of skim through them and hit Delete – there has to be something compelling to make me take a closer look, and I will fully admit that a pretty cover is often that “thing” that does the trick. What can I say, I totally judge a book by its cover!
Anyway, in this particular instance, I was drawn in enough to read the author bio. And something about this bio just made me HAVE to read this book …
ABOUT JENNIFER DERRICK:
Jennifer Derrick became a writer at the age of six when her parents bought her a child’s typewriter for Christmas and agreed to pay her a penny per page for any stories she churned out. When she got older, Jennifer realized that she needed to make (much) more money from her writing so she first turned to the corporate world (where she learned that she is spectacularly unsuited to cubicle life) and ultimately to freelancing where she now writes everything from technical manuals to articles on personal finance and European-style board games. Her writing career came full circle when Clean Teen Publishing published Broken Fate, her first novel. By her calculations, her parents owe her about $3.00 for the book.
She lives in North Carolina and, when not writing, can often be found reading anything she can get her hands on, playing board games, watching sports, camping, running marathons, and playing with her dog
Author Links:
Something about this cute story about Jennifer’s parents offering to pay her for her stories captured my attention and tickled my imagination. I went back and more carefully read about her book (Broken Fate). And I bought it.
Now, of course, if the book itself hadn’t sounded good to me, I wouldn’t have picked it up, but Jennifer’s author bio was a HUGE influence on me buying the book. I think, in my mind, if an author can manage to engage and intrigue me in just a short description of herself, how much better would a whole book be?! I suppose I’ve yet to prove whether or not this theory is true – I’ll let you know when I’ve read it!
This isn’t the first time that an author bio has utterly entranced me – I’ve posted the “long” bio for Jodi Meadows because I love it so much (and she mentions ferrets! I love ferrets!). And I know there have been others that I’ve enjoyed. My husband isn’t interested in books and only semi-skims my reviews, but he tells me he likes to read the author bios! (Yeah he’s kooky like that.) But this is the first time I can remember deciding to buy a book based mostly (at least initially) on an author blurb.
Have you ever loved an author bio so much it made you decide to buy (or at least read) a book? Any author bios you love? Tell me about them in the comments. I want to know!
This post has been linked up to the 2016 Book Blog Discussion Challenge!
Leave a Reply