The Anthropic copyright infringement settlement is a milestone for the industry as the largest copyright settlement in history, but it does not come close to remedying the harm to the publishing ecosystem caused by AI companies using books and journalism as foundational components of their large language models. While the settlement compensates authors and publishers for Anthropic’s act of downloading books from pirate sites, AI models continue to gorge books without the consent of their authors and publishers, now through destructive scanning. As an industry we face a decisive moment, and it behooves us all to look out for each other.

The relationship between an author and their publisher has always depended on trust and an understanding of mutual benefit. The prestige and success of publishing houses is built on the talents of their writers who are now facing an existential threat from AI. The downward trend in writers’ incomes over the last decade is being accelerated by AI’s replacement of human writers—in journalism, corporate writing, and books that mimic authors’ works. Already, we are losing both veteran writers and promising new voices, and it will get worse.  

A moment like this requires cooperation, and authors are looking to publishers to act as partners in sustaining the writing profession. None of us benefit when talented authors cannot afford to write for a living anymore. Every great book starts with an author—a human author.

Publishers, especially the major houses which have thousands of books in the settlement, will be receiving large sums of money which will have a noticeably positive impact on their bottom lines. By contrast, only a handful of authors will be getting more than a modest vacation or the ability to pay bills from the settlement.

As such, in the spirit of partnership, and to simplify payouts, we ask publishers to take the following actions to ensure that the benefit of this historic settlement lifts up the entire industry.

1. First, we ask that publishers voluntarily withdraw their claim from books that have been long out of print, regardless of whether there is proof that rights have formally reverted under the contract.

If a publisher has not issued a statement or paid royalties on a book in years—certainly if it has been more than a decade—then the publisher should relinquish any claim to the award for the title and allow the author to take 100 percent. Many authors and publishers have not kept good records of their reversions, and it makes little sense to send authors, agents, and publishers on a wild goose chase to find those records. Even if it turns out that the author or their agent never actually sent the reversion letter or that it was not received and recorded, it should not matter. We have heard from far too many authors whose books have been out of print and have not had any communication from their publishers for 20, 30, and even 40 or more years, where the publisher is still claiming 50 percent. That is not fair. Let’s please agree that those rights should have reverted and the author deserves 100 percent.

2. Second, we call on all publishers to use a portion of their settlement proceeds to compensate those authors whose books were excluded from the settlement because their works were not registered on a timely basis, even though the publisher was required to do so.

Far too many works were omitted from the settlement due to the publisher’s failure to register the book in a timely manner, as contractually obligated. To be included in the settlement, a work had to have been registered with the U.S. Copyright Office in a timely manner and actually downloaded by Anthropic. The Authors Guild has never been given access to the dataset of downloaded works (nor was anyone other than a few major publishers), and there is no way for authors to check whether the works were in fact downloaded. 

Given the enormity of the breach, regardless of whether there is proof of download, the obvious solution is for publishers to pay 50 percent of the award amount per title (approximately $1,500) to all authors whose works were (i) published prior to the download dates established by the settlement agreement (July 2021 and August 2022), (ii) are currently on LibGen or Pirate Mirror Library (the pirate sites from which Anthropic downloaded), and (iii) for which the publisher had a contractual obligation to register but failed to do so.

3. Finally, we urge publishers to use the proceeds of the awards to invest in new and diverse books and programs to develop new voices.

These actions will serve to strengthen the publishing ecosystem and help ensure its survival. It is an investment in our shared future.