This paper concerns the process of negotiating author and reader roles in the blogosphere.The starting point of this article is the theory of Roland Barthes that the death of the author isnecessary for the birth of the reader. This idea notably responds to changing relations between theauthor and the reader in the new media era. The example of the blogosphere allows us to see thatthe roles of the author and the reader are not pre-defined and the field of their "laws" is negotiated(two models of negotiations are described in this paper). In the blogosphere, which is an example ofparticipatory culture, knocking the author off his pedestal does not result in the reader replacingthe author, as R. Barthes would like. On the empty pedestal, after dumping the author, the readerdoes not appear – but communication does.