If you are having trouble finding a print source that has information on your author, you may want to do a search on Gale's Literary Index . This free index lets you search it by author or by title. More and more author biographies are appearing on the Internet. Most of the information is not compiled by a single person or organization. Instead each author's page tends to be written by someone different, so the information available can vary tremendously from author to author.
Coverage is still fairly erratic.
The Internet holds great potential as a resource on very new authors as both publishers and authors begin to use this medium to promote books by beginning authors. The links on this site are divided by the nationality of the author, so you'll see sections on African writers, American writers, Spanish writers, etc. Each links to pages that may include a biography and bibliography of the author's works. Yahoo also links to a large number of authors. These are organized by genre, or type of writing.