Depending on the material of the bow, a bow may be improved with firewood or the appropriate ingot to increase the damage of the bow. Depending on perks and level of the Smithing skill, bows can be made increasingly more powerful.
I gathered a lot of information from other superb Skyrim sites, like the Unoffical Elder Scrolls Pages and the Elder Scrolls Wiki. Character Creation Skyrim's character creation options have much less of an effect on your character than in previous games. On the plus side, this means that ...