Author Pictures
Oct
16
2005

At Agent007’s blog, she talked about author pictures on the back of books and also linked an article about the importance of author pictures.

This always bugs me – why is it important to see a picture of the author? I mean, okay, if you want to see me, I’ll post a picture, but does it make me a better writer? Does my picture make you want to buy my books?

Conversely, does a bad picture make you not want to buy a book? Agent007 refers to does the author look like they should be writing this kind of book as one of the things she asks herself when she picks up a book – this confuses me to a certain extent. I mean, what on earth does someone look like who writes erotic romance? Mystery? Sci Fi? Is there a context I’m missing?

Okay I get it if we’re talking about certain narrow subgenres – if I’m writing about my life as an aboriginal in the outback as a biography piece and I’m not, that makes a difference. But other than that, I don’t see any correlation between what I look like and certain book genres.

So tell me, what do you think about author pictures?

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