Author


In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is called authorship, which means a sculptor, painter, or composer is considered the author of their respective sculptures, paintings, or musical compositions. Although in common usage, the term "author" is often associated specifically with the writer of a book, article, play, or other written work. In cases involving a work for hire, the employer or commissioning party is legally considered the author of the work, even if it was created by someone else.
Typically, the first owner of a copyright is the creator of the copyrighted work, i.e., the author. If more than one person created the work, then joint authorship has taken place. Copyright law differs around the world. The United States Copyright Office, for example, defines copyright as "a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States to authors of 'original works of authorship.
Some works are considered to be author-less, or are anonymously or secretly authored. The monkey selfie copyright dispute in the 2010s was a notable dispute of authorship involving photographs taken by Celebes crested macaques using equipment belonging to a nature photographer. The photographer asserted authorship of the photographs, which the United States Copyright Office denied, stating: "To qualify as a work of 'authorship' a work must be created by a human being." The development of generative artificial intelligence has led to discourse regarding authorship of the media it generates.

Legal significance of authorship

Holding the title of "author" over any "literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, certain other intellectual works" gives rights to this person, the owner of the copyright, especially the exclusive right to engage in or authorize any production or distribution of their work. Any person or entity wishing to use intellectual property held under copyright must receive permission from the copyright holder to use this work, and often will be asked to pay for the use of copyrighted material.
The copyrights on intellectual work expire after a certain time. It enters the public domain, where it can be used without limit. Copyright laws in many jurisdictions – mostly following the lead of the United States, in which the entertainment and publishing industries have very strong lobbying power – have been amended repeatedly since their inception, to extend the length of this fixed period where the work is exclusively controlled by the copyright holder. Technically, someone owns their work from the time it's created. A notable aspect of authorship emerges with copyright in that, in many jurisdictions, it can be passed down to another, upon one's death. The person who inherits the copyright is not the author, but has access to the same legal benefits.
Intellectual property laws are complex. Works of fiction involve trademark law, likeness rights, fair use rights held by the public, and many other interacting complications.
Authors may portion out the different rights that they hold to different parties at different times, and for different purposes or uses, such as the right to adapt a plot into a film, television series, or video game. If another party chooses to adapt the work, they may have to alter plot elements or character names in order to avoid infringing previous adaptations. An author may also not have rights when working under contract that they would otherwise have, such as when creating a work for hire, or when writing material using intellectual property owned by others.
In the United States, the Copyright Clause of the Constitution of the United States provides the Congress with the power of "securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries". The language regarding authors was derived from proposals by Charles Pinckney, "to secure to authors exclusive rights for a limited time", and by James Madison, "to secure to literary authors their copyrights for a limited time", or, in the alternative, "to encourage, by proper premiums & Provisions, the advancement of useful knowledge and discoveries". Both proposals were referred to the Committee of Detail, which reported back a proposal containing the final language, which was incorporated into the Constitution by unanimous agreement of the convention.

Philosophical views of the nature of authorship

The Statute of Anne in 1710 set a legal precedent which laid the foundations of copyright, further establishing an author as the sole creator of a literary work. While this legislation acknowledged that an author's words were their Intellectual property, it in no way protected that author's ideas. For example, one writer could legally copy another writer's plot exactly, as long as the words were not copied verbatim. In other words, the Statue of Anne protected an author's form of expression but not the thoughts behind their words.
In literary theory, critics find complications in the term author beyond what constitutes authorship in a legal setting. In the wake of postmodern literature, critics such as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault have examined the role and relevance of authorship to the meaning or interpretation of a literary text.
Barthes challenges the idea that a text can be attributed to any single author. He writes, in his essay "Death of the Author", that "it is language which speaks, not the author." The words and language of a text itself determine and expose meaning for Barthes, and not someone possessing legal responsibility for the process of its production. Every line of written text is a mere reflection of references from any of a multitude of traditions, or, as Barthes puts it, "the text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centers of culture"; it is never original. With this, the perspective of the author is removed from the text, and the limits formerly imposed by the idea of one authorial voice, one ultimate and universal meaning, are destroyed. The explanation and meaning of a work does not have to be sought in the one who produced it, "as if it were always in the end, through the more or less transparent allegory of the fiction, the voice of a single person, the author 'confiding' in us." The psyche, culture, fanaticism of an author can be disregarded when interpreting a text, because the words are rich enough themselves with all of the traditions of language. To expose meanings in a written work without appealing to the celebrity of an author, their tastes, passions, vices, is, to Barthes, to allow language to speak, rather than author.
Michel Foucault argues in his essay "What is an author?" that all authors are writers, but not all writers are authors. He states that "a private letter may have a signatory—it does not have an author." For a reader to assign the title of author upon any written work is to attribute certain standards upon the text which, for Foucault, are working in conjunction with the idea of "the author function." Foucault's author function is the idea that an author exists only as a function of a written work, a part of its structure, but not necessarily part of the interpretive process. The author's name "indicates the status of the discourse within a society and culture," and at one time was used as an anchor for interpreting a text, a practice which Barthes would argue is not a particularly relevant or valid endeavor.
Expanding upon Foucault's position, Alexander Nehamas writes that Foucault suggests "an author is whoever can be understood to have produced a particular text as we interpret it," not necessarily who penned the text. It is this distinction between producing a written work and producing the interpretation or meaning in a written work that both Barthes and Foucault are interested in. Foucault warns of the risks of keeping the author's name in mind during interpretation, because it could affect the value and meaning with which one handles an interpretation.
Literary critics Barthes and Foucault suggest that readers should not rely on or look for the notion of one overarching voice when interpreting a written work, because of the complications inherent with a writer's title of "author." They warn of the dangers interpretations could suffer from when associating the subject of inherently meaningful words and language with the personality of one authorial voice. Instead, readers should allow a text to be interpreted in terms of the language as "author."

Relationship with publisher

Self-publishing

Self-publishing is when authors act as the publisher of their own books and take full responsibility and control of the costs. Those costs include editing, printing, and distributing their own works.

Traditional publishing

With commissioned publishing, the publisher makes all the publication arrangements and the author covers all expenses.
Authors may be compensated through a percentage of a book's wholesale or specific price, or by receiving a fixed amount per copy sold. To minimize risk, publishers sometimes defer such payments until a certain number of copies have been sold. In Canada, this approach appeared in the 1890s but did not become widespread until the 1920s. Established authors may be offered advance payments against future royalties, though this practice has become less common. Most independent publishers now pay royalties as a percentage of net receipts though how net receipts are calculated can vary by publisher. Under these agreements, the author is not responsible for any publication costs; the financial burden is borne entirely by the publisher, who typically retains the largest share of the revenue. See also Compensation.

Vanity publishing

Vanity publishers normally charge a flat fee for arranging publication, offer a platform for selling, and then take a percentage of the sale of every copy of a book. The author receives the rest of the money made. Most materials published this way are for niche groups and not for large audiences.
Vanity publishing, or subsidy publishing, is stigmatized in the professional world. In 1983, Bill Henderson defined vanity publishers as people who would "publish anything for which an author will pay, usually at a loss for the author and a nice profit for the publisher." In subsidy publishing, the book sales are not the publishers' main source of income, but instead the fees that the authors are charged to initially produce the book are. Because of this, the vanity publishers need not invest in making books marketable as much as other publishers need to. This leads to low quality books being introduced to the market.