Tip: If you have visitors wandering around your base, you can go under the knowledge task to see what all books they've read in their lifetime and what kind of books they are. That way, you can search for somewhat unusual types like novels, chronicles, cultural histories, biographies, autobiographies, dictionaries, dialogues, and etc.
I really wish this functionality was on the written objects screen. Right now you just have to go off of the title. This work, unfortunately, wasn't written in my fortress and we don't have a copy of it, either. That said, I do have a pair of autobiographies and some cultural histories.
What I would like to do is figure out a way to reliably make dwarves produce biographies. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how. The only requirement that I know of for a dwarf to produce a biography is knowledge of the biography topic, which can be obtained either from them reading a book on the subject (easy) to discovering it themselves (very, very hard and random). After that, I don't know if they have to be assigned to a library or not to actually produce the biography.
That sounds simple, but the thing is that dwarves are practically-minded. They seem to prefer to write manuals and guides about topics they know than novels, biographies, and etc. What if you had a dwarf that knew only of biographies and of no other topics, though? They might write one guide on the subject of writing biographies, but will they stop writing guides after that and start writing biographies?
The problem is, once you have a big library, dwarves tend to swarm it and learn about all the topics. It's hard to pick and dwarf that's "unpolluted," so to speak, and I suspect that if they've avoided the library that much, they'll be poor biographers anyway.
One idea I've had is the Dwarven Monastery. We take kids that just turned 18, which haven't had a chance to read books yet, and slap them in a private, sealed off room with writing materials, food, and drink. Toss in a bookshelf and make a tiny library only they can access. Assign them as a scholar, and throw down a book on biographies as inspiration. Then, see what happens.
Note that what kind of books your dwarves write has literally no gameplay impact. This is just for Armok and maybe internet points. Damn it, I want my dwarves to have quality literature!
I think it's better to approach John Company as a simulation more than a game. You're right that the lead player has an incentive to wreck the company if it will give them the win. That's Dehli, baby!