Learning From Successful Writers’ About Pages

by | Digital Platforms, Writing

As I prepare to rework and rewrite my website’s About page, I thought it would be helpful to look at several successful authors’ About/Bio pages.

Here are the authors I looked at with their corresponding About page links:

Leo Babauta [https://zenhabits.net/about/]
James Scott Bell [https://www.jamesscottbell.com]
Dan Brown [https://danbrown.com/#books-section]
Terry Brooks [https://terrybrooks.net/author/]
Robert Dugoni [https://www.robertdugonibooks.com/bio]
Austin Kleon [https://austinkleon.com/about/]
Dean Koontz [https://www.deankoontz.com/about/about-dean/]
George R.R. Martin [https://georgerrmartin.com/about-george/]
Steven Pressfield [https://stevenpressfield.com/about/]
Veronica Roth [https://veronicarothbooks.com/bio/]
J . K. Rowling [https://www.jkrowling.com/about/]
David Sedaris [https://blog.reedsy.com/author-websites/]
Veronica Roth [https://veronicarothbooks.com/bio/]

Several observations.

  1. All authors had photos of themselves.
  2. 11 of 13 wrote in the third person.
  3. 11 of 13 included where they live.
  4. The average word count was 417 words, but this was skewed by J.K Rowling’s page, which came in at a whopping 1656 words! Without her, the average word count was 314 words.
  5. The lowest word count—and I think the cleanest page— was by Veronica Roth, coming in at 55 words. The second-lowest was Leo Babauta’s at 99 words (although he did include a link to his story—called My Story— which comes in at 1338 words).
  6. “About” was used more frequently than “Bio.”
  7. Some About pages are very visual, such as Steven Pressfield’s About page.
  8. Some feel overly complicated to me, such as George R.R. Martin’s About page.

For myself, I am going for a clean, simple look. I will model my new About page after Veronica Roth and Terry Brooks; I will include a photo, where I live, and write it in the third person. I’ll also shoot for a word count below 150.

What should you do? I think that depends on both the purpose of your website and aesthetic, but it can be a useful exercise to create a list of successful authors you respect and take a look at how they approached their own About pages.