Author in protest disowning books offers share (8)
I believe the answer is:
dispense
'author' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are verbs in their base form, I cannot understand how one could define the other.
'in protest disowning books offers share' is the wordplay.
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'protest' becomes 'dissent' (synonyms).
'disowning' indicates named letters should be taken away.
'books' becomes 'NT' (abbreviation for New Testament).
'offers share' becomes 'pen' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'dissent' with 'nt' taken away is 'disse'.
'disse' placed around 'pen' is 'DISPENSE'.
(Other definitions for dispense that I've seen before include "Execute" , "Do without - give to others" , "Issue (e.g. medicine); do (with)out" , "Supply (prescription)" , "Deal out - needs sip (anag)" .)