SolN, premium members, not so...

To add to your request, Max, how about making it mandatory to write something in the Bio box - even if it is just "Let me get used to the site before I tell all". When I go to the 'New Members' pics and click on them, I like to see right away something other than just "This person has not...."

~Tom

Right-o!  I like to know what genres the writer is interested in.  So even if they haven't told anything about themselves, it's something...

good-o dags! New site , new tools. And, I'm always Up for a quickie.

Nevertheless, the road to writing recognition eventually requires a biography because the readers want to know about an author before they buy into them. I NEVER buy any book on the Amazon (or  the Arno, lol) if the writer is not a member of Yale's SKULL & CROSSBONES SOCIETY.

When I walk down the street, I don't do it with my favorite books, my preferred genres, and my life history and career goals taped to my forehead. I can still review a novel.

It looks to me like you'd prefer to judge a book by the appearances and circumstances of the author. In a better world, prejudgements do not happen, and an opinion is based on content rather external appearances.  Tell us exactly what sort thing an author might put in his bio that would make you jump at his writing with eager anticipation. The mind-meld teaser exists in a good content blurb which is a hard thing to write indeed, but "This is a story about a fish with a conscience" ought to have more impact than "This author never graduated from high school" unless you would like to say: "What can an uneducated rube possibly have to say about fish?" Then how far do you take this? "What can a (white/black) (male/female) possibly have to say about a (black/white) (female/male)?"

aloha  charles
i ran a successful book and video store on kauai for five yestermorrows. to eat i had to read quickly through 100-500+ author-offerings each month. one or two f*&k-ups and I was eating the fish I might be able to catch in the wailua river that month.

Usually, i read so much crap that I knew how to disqualify an author in less than 25-50 words if the bio sucked. however, many times a picture and 10- 20 well-written words pumped up my curiosity enough to go for Ingram's or other publishers promo come-ons  for a new author or even an established author going off genre. Spending MY money on a new author sometimes gave me a starvation diet for the month, and when you go hungry, you learn quickly.

Author bio: published writer, rube, dilettante or he-man or he-woman of wordy-word that fascinate... exacting details  applied to various genres, if crafted well usually provoked me to spend up to 30 minutes on it and then further research the author.

Fo' instance: Action Adventure, well gee, knowing that a man is a survivalist living in a tent in Georgia tells me directly that I am dealing with a he-man who, like Terry MacDonald, if cranking out the chapters, takes his he-man writing seriously. And, I was the first reviewer  to recommend this writer on tNBW.

Author image: A romance writer needs to present the romance image/graphic to both men or women to get the testosterone flowing in both sexes. Romance writers bought me a house (well at least the down payment).

In bookstore displays (where I might make up to $500/each day) any book with a compelling bio and/or THE LOOK graphic/image sometimes sold the book for me. At the least, the display prompted a second look from tourists and locals, when competing with 10 or more similar displays

The world is full of people who are rushed, who don't want to split fish-hairs over super-newby writers or writers who are too far gone, gone, gone with the academic arty-farty pretense, the artifice of writing for writing sake, writing just to spin words structures in a Tower of Babel. Trying to sell that crap was the kiss of death.

However, sometimes I was surprised by my poor decisions when the kiss of death, of say a Literary Fiction smack-a-rue bestseller came back to kick my money-grubbing ass and make me kiss my own silly ass as I ate poi and limu for the month.

And here I have written a Tower of Blather... lol.

although, a skillful, brilliant writer/artist/musician /filmmaker should be able to generate irrational exuberance at the visceral level and at the intellectual level, for the full spectrum of intellects, and in many different ways when having to compete for readers and a paycheck.

the point i m trying to make on this thread is that tNBW is not the be-all, end-all to the writing game... we are all on tNBW to qualify for future races, to lesrn the race course, not be in a race here ... although we are all partaking of a faux-race that  is important in many different ways.

there are a lot of bright tomorrows for the lucky writers amongst us who look good, present good and read good... lol!.