Who Has The Final Say in How A Character Looks?

Recently I saw a mood board created by another reader of two main characters from a book I have read. The images they used were very similar to what I had imagined from my own reading. So when the author commented telling them they were completely wrong, I was shocked.

As both of us had imagined them this way, the author had clearly written those details into the book. The description was enough for this person to find similar images and make a collage. When the person asked if the author could provide any more details this author just replied ‘read the book’ when clearly she had if she was making fan collages.

Putting aside the fact the author was completely rude, it made me question who really has the final say in what a character looks like? Is it the author as they’ve imagined every detail as they’ve added it to their books? Or is it the readers who have used the details given to them to imagine what the character looks like?

I think that the readers are an important factor. If an author want’s the reader to see them same character, they need to work hard on describing them correctly. Once someone has become attached to a character and how they look in their head, I don’t think an author has the right to change the description outside of the book/series.

An example of an author giving up a bit of control is J.K. Rowling. Hermione’s skin colour is never mentioned in the books. So when a black actress was cast in the Cursed Child, Rowling publicly noted that she had never wrote that Hermione was white. This worked well as many fans had made fan art of a black Hermione for years previously. Different people had imagined her differently while reading due purely because of the information on page.

Do you think the author has the final say in how a character looks?