If more than one person created the work, then a case of joint authorship can be made provided some criteria are met.

Joint authorship of a copyrightable work is when two or more persons contribute enough to the work to be the author of that work.

In the copyright laws of various jurisdictions, there is a necessity for little flexibility regarding what constitutes authorship.

Typically, the first owner of a copyright is the person who created the work i.e. the author.

The more specific phrase published author refers to an author (especially but not necessarily of books) whose work has been independently accepted for publication by a reputable publisher, versus a self-publishing author or an unpublished one.

Self-publishing is the publication of media by its author without the involvement of an established publisher.

Ghostwriters, technical writers, and textbooks writers are typically paid in a different way: usually a set fee or a per word rate rather than on a percentage of sales.

A ghostwriter is hired to write literary or journalistic works, speeches, or other texts that are officially credited to another person as the author.

An auteur (, 'author') is an artist, such as a film director, who applies a highly centralized and subjective control to many aspects of a collaborative creative work; in other words, a person equivalent to an author of a novel or a play.

A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction.

In academic publishing, the lead author, or first author, is the first named author of a publication such as a research article or audit.

Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, science fiction and fantasy.

Biographers are authors who write an account of another person's life, while autobiographers are authors who write their own biography.

Ray Douglas Bradbury (August 22, 1920June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter.

This list includes authors who are Alaskan Native, American Indian, First Nations, Inuit, Métis, and Indigenous peoples of Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America.

Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author, scriptwriter, essayist, humorist, satirist and dramatist.

John Enoch Powell (16 June 19128 February 1998) was a British politician, classical scholar, author, linguist, soldier, philologist and poet.

Many of the authors that served in various real-life wars (and survived) wrote stories that are at least somewhat based on their own experiences.

Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941) is an American singer–songwriter, author, poet and painter who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades.

A large number of authors choose to use some form of initials in their name when it appears in their literary work.

A pen name or nom de plume is a pseudonym adopted by an author.

John Dickson Carr (November 30, 1906 – February 27, 1977) was an American author of detective stories, who also published using the pseudonyms Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson and Roger Fairbairn.

Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee, (27 May 1922 – 7 June 2015) was an English actor, singer, military officer, and author.

This is a list of some notable authors in the western fiction genre.

Henry Slesar (June 12, 1927 – April 2, 2002) was an American author, playwright, and copywriter.

Russell Edward Brand (born 4 June 1975) is an English comedian, actor, radio host, author, and activist.

John Kellogg Hodgman (born June 3, 1971) is an American author, actor, and humorist.

The USC Scripter Award (Scripter) is the name given to an award presented annually by the University of Southern California (USC) to honor both authors and screenwriters.