Authors — once an elite minority — will soon be a majority.

An article on Seed Magazine discusses the finding of a recent study on authorship. The study, which claims to be the first of its kind, compared the number of published authors since 1400 to now.

To be considered published, an author’s text (book, magazine, journal and now more recent social media – blogs, Facebook, and Twitter), must have been read by at least 100 people.

The two researchers, Denis G. Pelli and Charles Bigelow, found the number of published authors per year increased nearly tenfold every century for six centuries, and that by 2000 there were 1 million book authors per year.

But now authorship, with the advent of new media, is growing nearly tenfold each year. The graph predicts that by next year 1 percent of the world’s population will by publishing and that nearly 10 percent will be the following year. If the “twitter-author curve” proves to be accurate, every person will publish by 2013.

The researchers state that even if they were to change the criteria for publishing to texts that were read by 1,000 readers, it would only delay the predicted 100 percent participation by a year under their model.

While many of you might cringe at all this data, the study shows how media participation is becoming an everyday part of society. It is evidence to support, in the authors words, “[that] our society is changing from consumers to creators.”