An author is someone who writes. It can be a person who writes articles, blogs, or books. An author can also be a person who writes software or technical documentation. Often, the term writer and author are used interchangeably but they have different meanings. Author usually means someone who writes professionally, whereas writer can be used to describe any type of writing.
The author role is one of five user roles in WordPress. It allows a registered user to write and publish content on your site, but doesn’t give them access to your website settings or plugins. This role is best for people who will only be writing and publishing content on your site. If you want to limit the scope of your author, consider adding them to an editor role instead.
Historically, authors have been responsible for creating the ideas and writings behind their work, while writers have executed them on the page. The word author is a little more prestigious than writer because it implies that they had some degree of involvement in the creation of the ideas and the overall concept of the piece. This makes sense, since a novelist, for example, will spend years engrossed in the creation of their book before it can ever be published.
Foucault argues that the concept of the author has evolved over time to become something far more significant than simply the individual writer. The author function is a cultural construction that results from the attribution of discourses to specific individuals, and it shapes the ways in which we value texts and how they are written. Foucault argues that the author function was formed around the nineteenth century through the biopolitical rise of a system of property that turned writing into a commodity and into a way of classifying bodies.
In addition to writing their own work, authors have an obligation to reach out to a public and promote it in order to get the word out about it. They might share daily snippets of their research online, offer praise for an article they admire, or send press releases to newspapers and radio stations. In addition to these responsibilities, many authors are trying to build up their author platform in hopes that they will be one of the first to pop up when someone searches for them within their discipline or beyond.
It’s not easy to be an author, even for those who are already professional writers. While they can be incredibly prolific, it takes a lot of dedication to create strong pieces that will appeal to a wide audience. The process can take months, or sometimes years, and it’s not uncommon for an author to add a writer to their team to help with the writing part of the process. Whether it’s to finish the last chapters of their manuscript or to edit the work, a writer can be an invaluable asset to the author’s success.