Distinct from the author and the narrator, the term refers to the "authorial character" that a reader infers from a text based on the way a literary work is written.
In other words, the implied author is a construct, the image of the writer produced by a reader as called forth from the text.
[1] Following the hermeneutics tradition of Goethe, Thomas Carlyle and Benedetto Croce, Intentionalists P. D. Juhl and E. D. Hirsch Jr. insist that the correct interpretation of a text reflects the intention of the real author exactly.
However, under the influence of structuralism, Roland Barthes declared "the death of the (real) author", saying the text speaks for itself in reading.
[6] Chatman also argues for the relevance of the implied author as a concept in film studies, a position that David Bordwell disputes.