Edinburgh Napier University

  There has been much formative work on the origins of the economy of authorship, focusing on the evolution of copyright laws and their effect on the position of the author. Previous studies have examined the role of the patron, the industrialisation of writing and the professionalisation of authorship, and the advent of literary agents. This paper builds on the models and concepts derived from these studies and extends them into the last fifty years. It outlines the changing nature of authorship over that time with particular reference to the different ways in which authors have derived income over the years, including from the ‘new’ technologies such as film and television and the ‘newer’ technologies such as web-based dissemination. It evaluates the appropriateness of existing models and concepts and, through a survey of contemporary authors, offers a perspective on the role of copyright in defining contemporary authorship particularly in the contexts of digital media and of globalisation.