An author is the person who creates a written work, such as a book, story, article or the like, whether short or long, fiction or nonfiction, poetry or prose, technical or literature. Within copyright law the term "author" is often used for the creator of any work, be it written, painted, sculptured, music, a photograph or a film.

Role in critical theory

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One key issue in literary theory is the relationship between the meaning of a literary text and its author's conscious intent.

• The phrase "Death of the Author" was popularized by Roland Barthes in his 1968 essay with the same name. It is used to convey the idea that texts have meaning and an independent existence outside that intended by the author, depending on the context and reader. The death of the author is in self-conscious opposition to the New Criticism, a literary critical movement popular in England and America in the first half of the 20th century. According to this movement, the author's intent is assumed to be quite clear to the author and it becomes the critic's task to understand this intent.
• Michel Foucault's 1969 essay "What is an Author?" responds in part to Barthes and characterizes the author-function in four main ways. He claims that the author-function is linked to the juridical and institutional system of the discourse, that it is not the same for all discourses, that it is not spontaneous attribution, and that it might not refer to a real individual.

Some historical financial arrangements between authors and publishers

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