What is an autobiography?
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It means a detailed account of a person written by himself. On the other hand, biography means writing about another person’s life. For example, if someone writes about your life, we call it a biography. In contrast, if you write about your life, we’ll call it an autobiography.
What do we write in an autobiography?
To make it easy for you, let’s look at the following example. Ever visited your favorite celebrity’s Wikipedia page? If yes, what did you see there? Haven’t you seen a very lengthy newspaper-type article? Most probably, you saw it. It shows you that person’s history and other things that include the following:
- Their birthplace
- Where did they grow up?
- What did they study?
- Career Details
- Information about their parents ‘
- How was their childhood?
However, autobiographies are like these articles but are more detailed. They are also fun to read. Moreover, you can contact an expert writer to write an autobiography. An autobiography writer will help you write a perfect book by telling the vital elements involved in it.
Below, we will discuss the four essential elements of an excellent autobiography.
1. Authenticity in your stories
It is the most critical factor of autobiographies. People are fed up with fake information and scenarios one makes up for himself. They want to read real things and factual information. Therefore, you need to write an authentic autobiography. Remember, you are not writing a novel. Thus, you don’t need to make up fake scenarios to keep readers engaged.
Moreover, don’t think if you don’t include made-up stories, your book will get boring. You can write interestingly without faking it. Engagingly write your autobiography. If you do that, readers won’t get bored. But how do you do that? Let’s find it out in the next section.
2. Engaging Way to Tell Story
You are not writing a novel, and you don’t need to create made-up fantasies in your story. However, you can choose the novel style. It means you can adapt the writing style that emits thrill, mystery, and fun. Moreover, adopt different emotions according to the topics and situations in your story. Firstly, if you go straight and keep telling what you did and how you did it, it will become boring after some while. Secondly, your readers aren’t reading an article. They’re reading your autobiography, which is a book. Books need to have good engagement. The purpose is to keep readers engaged and tell your authentic story.
Moreover, would you want nobody to read your autobiography? No. You are writing it so that people can read it. Therefore, make your writing engaging. Leave white spaces in your book as well. It helps readers to relax their minds while reading. However, your editor will take care of it when he edits the manuscript. After that, line height and spacing are important as well. Both of them help improve readability.
Readability means how less difficult it is to read a text. Choose them wisely to improve your text readability.
Readability includes many things. It includes the format, sentence structures, use of complex words, and more. However, you should use hard words where they are important. It’s because you are not writing a web article. You are writing a book. Primarily literate people read autobiographies, so it’s not an issue if you use tough words.
3. Attractive Book Cover
People see the book cover first, even before they read the title. A book cover makes the first impression of your book. Therefore, you need to design an attractive book cover. You can design it yourself by using online tools. However, we don’t recommend using these tools when working professionally. We suggest hiring an expert designer to make your book cover. Firstly, everyone doesn’t know the usage of professional tools like Photoshop. Secondly, the designs you make with online tools lack creativity.
Everyone uses a template and edits it to make a design. It is okay in some instances but not for professional use.
4. Attractive Book Title
As we said above, the title is the second thing people notice after the book cover. Therefore, it’s essential to give your autobiography a good name. However, the title you choose for the book should be creative and catchy. It should be relatable to your autobiography as well. Moreover, don’t rush into deciding a title. Brainstorm and take time to come up with a title. You get time to write an autobiography to choose a book title. However, you can change its title several times until it seems perfect. You can get suggestions from people around as well as expert writers.
Should your autobiography teach something?
It’s an essential question to ask. We don’t write hundreds of pages aimlessly, don’t we? However, there is a critical aspect to keep in mind about it. Moreover, don’t become preachy about the things you tell in your biography. Recall when you read story tales in your childhood. Did they have, in the end, a lesson directing you to behave a certain way or not? No! They emit teachings from them. It’s contagious that you get those teachings from them and absorb them in yourself. Stories rarely had to tell readers what to deduce from them. Use such creativity in your autobiography. However, if you think it’s suitable to tell it in a situation, go for it.
How much does it cost to write an autobiography?
You can write as much as you want free of cost. The question of how much it costs arises when you publish your writing. Anyway, it still costs a lot to write an autobiography. It costs you time, effort, and patience. There are two primary ways to publish any book:
- Traditional Publishing
- Self-publishing
Traditional Publishing
In traditional publishing, you publish your book by an established publishing house. Below are the top five famous publishing houses.
- Hachette
- HarperCollins
- Macmillan
- Penguin Random House
- Simon & Schuster
These five publishers are old and most quality publishers. It’s not easy to publish a book via these publishers. It can take up to six years. Nevertheless, there’s no guarantee they’ll publish your book. Write high-quality text and meet the publisher’s requirements. However, it’s not easy to do so. J.K Rowling, the famous Harry Potter novels writer, also faced rejections. However, it’s still possible. You need patience for that.
Self-Publishing
You can also go for the self-publishing method, which is pretty easy. The famous platform for self-publishing is Amazon Kindle Direct. It’s a more accessible way to publish a book. However, people don’t consider self-published books as quality ones. However, we find drawbacks in traditional publishing too. For example, they might ask you to write a specific thing in another way. To change something you want people to see your way can be disturbing.
Third Type of Publishing- Indie Publishing
We can also discuss a third publishing type, Indie Publishing. According to experts, it’s like creating your own publishing house. If you don’t like either option, you can go for indie publishing.
It’s no lie that book publishing has become a tedious task now. It was not as challenging to publish a book a hundred years back as it is now. However, its reason is also justified. Back at that time, there were not many people who wrote books. Now everyone is writing books for several benefits. Therefore, publishers have set requirements so that they only publish quality books.
How to write my own autobiography?
Know that autobiography means something we write ourselves. It’s about ourselves that we write ourselves. How does that sound? However, you can get the expert’s help in writing an autobiography. They’ll guide you about things that can improve your autobiography.
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What famous person wrote an autobiography?
The publisher quickly accepts celebrities and famous people’s biographies. Below is the list of famous individuals who have written autobiographies.
- Becoming (written by Michelle Obama, wife of Barack Obama)
- Dreams from my Father (written by Barack Obama)
- Seriously… I’m Kidding (written by Ellen DeGeneres)
- Long Walk to Freedom (Nelson Mandela)
- Autobiography of Mark Twain (written by Mark Twain)
- Moonwalk (written by Michael Jackson)
As you saw, it’s not essential to always use your name for the title. You can go for any relatable and creative name.
Conclusion
We discussed the importance of writing autobiographies. When you can teach people through your life’s experiences, it’s good to write one. We told you the essential elements of a good autobiography. Here’s a summary of that:
- Keep your autobiography authentic and fun to read
- Choose a relatable and creative book title for your autobiography. Don’t rush into deciding on a name for it. Take your time and then decide.
- Make an attractive book cover for your autobiography. Hire a professional graphic designer for it.
Ensure you remember all these points when writing an autobiography in 2022, and you’ll write an excellent book that can get lots of sales. Seek professional help in case you find trouble writing an autobiography.
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