Essay: Why Authors Tweet

New York Times :: Since the 19th century, the common conception of “the author” has gone something like this: A young man, in his garret, writes furiously, crumpling up papers and throwing them on the floor, losing track of time, heedless of the public, obsessed with his own imagination. He is aloof, elusive, a man whom you know only by his writing and the portrait in his book.

[Anne Trubek:] Many authors have little use for the pretension of hermetic distance (to their readers) and never accepted a historically specific idea of what it means to be a writer. With the digital age come new conceptions of authorship. And for both authors and readers, these changes may be unexpectedly salutary.

Continue to read Anne Trubek, www.nytimes.com