Though both; Autobiography and Biography seem to have some similarity, yet there exists a subtle difference between them. The crux of both these terms involves writing a complete history of a person’s life.

If you plan to write on any of these; then you need to clearly understand the difference before you commence writing. This will aid you to pen down the details with eloquence.

Topic of Writing

In an Autobiography, the author is the focus of writing. The entire book will revolves around the author – from the start up to the end. It’s all about the author only. In short “Auto” equates to “self”.

In contrast to Autobiography, a biography relates to writing the life story of someone else. The author is never the focus of writing in a biography. In fact the author writes down the memories for someone else.

Books of big, famous and busy personalities are usually termed biographies, because they usually don’t write it themselves, nor do they have time to pen it down themselves.

Approvals Required

Autobiography is usually written by the person himself/herself. In this case, there are no approvals are required to be taken. The author will be sharing his/her life history on a voluntary basis.

In a biography the author will be writing the life story of someone else. So if the author wants personal memoirs of the person to be shared, prior approval from the person on whom the books is being written needs to be taken.

In short, if the author wants to include intricate details, personal moments, photos in the book being written, prior permission needs to obtained from the person on whom the book is being written.

If the author decides to write a book on a person without taking approval from the person on whom the book is being written, the author can do so. But in this case the author will have to do a lot of research regarding the person. Such a book could end up having errors.

Common Points

An autobiography and a biography in all likelihood carry the same information. Both will enunciate the birth, school days, youth, education, college and university days, career and could culminate with death (depends on person’s existence).

The life of the person is penned down in chronological order. Special moments are written down as memoirs.

These memoirs provide intimate or close moments of a person’s life. When memoirs are written in biography it’s usually referred to ghost writing. By ghost writing we mean the author is given due credit for writing the memoir when in reality the memoir was actually penned down by the person on whom the book is being written.

Both, Autobiography and Biography are categorized as nonfiction. But based on the life of a person, and manner the story is written this category could change.