I contend that that author is not dead, but merely transformed. George Landow seems to support this notion with his discussion of the "reconfiguration", rather than murder, of the author. It is true that readers have power to interpret, creatively, and (with the advent of hypertext) to make choices about what they read and in what order. In this way different readers could construct texts from the same base ingredients. However, the pieces that readers work with, the choices that they make, have already been created by the author--by the architect or designer if you will. It is as though authors create Legos and readers use or play with them. More precisely, perhaps it is the authors who use Legos, created from the great pool of invention, to make designs which children can then imitate or reject and make their own structures using the pieces that the author has chosen.
Therefore, though the author has perhaps little control over what is eventually signified, he has nearly total control over what signifies--in direct contrast to the reader. In this way authors and readers seem almost equally responsible for creating a text, each playing a role that leads to the endless possibilities one can develop--much like the potential laying before a child and an open box of Legos.