What goes in the About the Author and About the Book sections?
Short answer: Kelly Bergh’s advice: About the Author is a one-page, third-person bio showing why this writer is the right person for the book. About the Book can be a sentence or two stating the estimated word count and expected manuscript-delivery timeline.
Answered by Kelly Bergh, Literary Agent, Lucinda Literary.
Create a free LitConnect account and submit your pitch.
The agent’s answer
About the Author goes in the third person, and Kelly jokes that it should be written to 'save an intern a job later' since it needs to read like the bio that already appears on the back of finished books. The point of boiling a career down to one page is to make the book's fit as a natural next step self-evident. About the Book, by contrast, is deliberately unglamorous. It can be a sentence or two stating word count (around 75,000 words is typical) and timeline (about a year to write after signing). She's explicit that it's fine to come in with just a brief sketch of scope, especially for authors like doctors running a practice who don't have time to fully plan the book before a project is greenlit.
In Kelly’s words
They need to see that no one else can write this book but you.
Kelly Bergh, 17:28
Source: How to Develop a Sellable Nonfiction Book Proposal.