Speaking of Mary Karr (see On Revisiting Media), my eyes semi-automatically zoomed in on her author bio on the back of The Art of Memoir as it somehow is longer than the summary of the book itself:

Mary Karr is the author of three award-winning, best-selling memoirs: The Liars' Club, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Cherry, which was selected as a "notable book" by book reviews nationwide; and Lit, which was one of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. A Guggenheim Fellow in poetry, Karr has won Pushcart Prizes for both verse and essays. She is the Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse University.

What was that all about? I have no idea what a Guggenheim Fellow is, let alone a Peck Professor , but it sure sounds important. Additionally, the "notable book" by book reviews nationwide part---with added quotes, no less---comes across as "we don't have anything on Cherry so let's just write this". I presume this long-winded bio is supposed to wow potential readers, but to be honest, to me, it comes across as smug.

Let's take a look at a few other author bios of books that are within my reach. This should be fun!

Danny Gregory's The Creative License:

Danny Gregory is the author of several books, including an illustrated memoir, Everyday Matters. Tens of thousands of creative aspirants regularly visit his weblog, www.dannygregory.com, he has created illustrations for numerous books and magazines and is the creative director of many award-winning global advertising campaigns. Danny lives in Greenwich Village with his wife and son.

More usage of the term award-winning, of course, although a bit more down-to-earth. The purpose of these blurbs seems to be trying to evoke a feeling of grandeur? You're holding something precious here, dear reader, this person is well-decorated!

Dietmar Sternad's Solve It!:

Dr Dietmar Sternad is a multiple award-winning management professor with a passion for teaching his students how to become smart problem solvers. He has faced a lot of problems (and has been able to solve quite a few) as a media executive, researcher, entrepreneur, management consultant, and father of two children.

Award-winning! A few more of those and the term loses its significance, doesn't it? Some folks also like clinging to their (doctoral) titles. If you're a professor, you've got a PhD, no need to add the "dr." prefix or ", PhD" suffix. You're already Certified Smart enough. It also seems good to mention as much professional titles as possible.

Ryan Holiday & Stephen Hanselman's Lives of the Stoics:

Ryan Holiday is one of the world's foremost thinkers and writers on ancient philosophy and its space in everyday life. He is a sought-after speaker and strategist, and is the author of many bestselling books including The Daily Stoic, The Obstacle is the Way, Ego is the Enemy and Stillness is the Key. His books have been translated into more than thirty languages and read by over three million people worldwide. He lives outside Austin, Texas, with his family.

As expected, more boasting. Is best-selling better or worse than award-winning? When it comes to the wallet, I'd say the former. We're starting to see a pattern here folks!

Will it hold true for more technical books, like The Go Programming Language from Alan A. A. Donovan and Brain W. Kernighan?

Alan A. A. Donovan is a member of Google's Go team in New York. He hold computer science degrees from Cambridge and MIT and has been programming in industry since 1996. Since 2005, he has worked at Google on infrastructure projects and was the co-designer of its proprietary build system, Blaze. He has built many libraries and tools for static analysis of Go programs, including oracle, godoc-analysis, eg, and gorename.

A slightly different approach here. This reads a bit like a heavily compressed CV. Potential readers are scanning for technical certificates of expertise, I guess. It doesn't say whether or not Blaze was a best-seller though! These days, is having "a member of Google's [whatever] team" on there a good or a bad thing?

Carol Dweck's Mindset:

DR CAROL S. DWECK is widely regarded as one of the world's leading researchers in the fields of personality, social psychology and developmental psychology. Her work has been featured in such publications as the New Yorker, The Times, and the Guardian.

This pocket format doesn't leave a lot of room resulting in a short bio that still leaves you mesmerized: world-renowned, woah! Admittedly, Dweck's Mindset is hugely popular. Perhaps I should stop buying books from people that already sell like hot cakes.

All right, one more. Michael Booth's Sushi & Beyond:

Michael Booth is a travel writer and journalist who contributes regularly to Condé Nast Traveller, the Independent on Sunday and Monocle, among many other publications at home and abroad. His last book, Doing Without Delia, was Book of the Week on Radio 4.

How about that, Book of the Week on Radio 4! Without context, for me in Belgium, that's... completely useless. We do have a local Radio 2 though. Again, we see a neat list of things he's contributed to, leading us to believe Booth is a competent travel writer (he is).

Perhaps I should revise my own author bio on The Creative Programmer. This is what's printed now:

Wouter Groeneveld is a software engineer and computer science education researcher at KU Leuven, where he researchers the importance of creativity in software engineering.

Where's that best-selling flash? Where's the list-of-amazing-things this author has done before? What about degrees? Surely this can be improved upon! Here's an attempt:

Dr. Wouter Groeneveld holds a PhD in Engineering Technology and MSc in Computer Science and is a distinguished software engineer who's worked in various roles in industry since 2007, from technical lead to development coach. He's currently a computer science education researcher at KU Leuven, where he published in top tier venues such as ACM's Transactions on Computing Education. His Dutch bread baking book Red Zuurdesem appeared on many notable "tip of the week" post-it notes.

Ahh. Much better.