The Authors Guild recently conducted a survey of authors to gather information about a troubling issue that came to light in the wake of the $1.5 billion Anthropic copyright class action settlement. After the settlement was announced, the Guild heard from many authors who told us that they had discovered that their publisher failed to register one or more of their books with the U.S. Copyright Office, in many cases despite clear obligations in their publishing agreements requiring the publisher to do so, making the books ineligible for the settlement.

Based on the definition of the class adopted by the court, only books that were 1) downloaded by Anthropic from LibGen and Pirate Library Mirror (PiLiMi) on certain dates in 2021 and 2022, 2) had ISBN or ASIN numbers, and 3) were registered with the Copyright Office within 3 months of publication or prior to the initial infringement were qualified to be covered by the class. Many authors and agents informed us that they believe their books were left off the “Works List” because of the publisher’s failure to register them.

Survey and Results

To help determine the scope of this problem, we posed a series of questions to authors about their experiences in this area. We asked authors to tell us whether their publishing contract required the publisher to register the copyright in the book, and if so, whether the publisher was required to do so within a specific time period. If there was a specific time requirement, we asked whether it was within three months of publication—the period provided under the copyright law to ensure eligibility for statutory damages and attorneys’ fees—or another deadline. Finally, we asked whether the publisher complied with that requirement. Authors were invited to list the specific titles and publishers to which their answers applied and could provide responses for multiple titles.

We received responses from over 500 authors, who listed more than 1,400 books and nearly 400 imprints, with publication dates ranging back over 40 years.

• For a majority of the books (54 percent), authors confirmed that their contracts did require the publisher to register the copyright; for another 17 percent, the author said they didn’t know if there was such a requirement.
• As to whether the publisher complied, we received responses regarding 864 books. For the overwhelming majority of those—804, or approximately 93 percent—authors reported that the publisher failed to comply with the registration requirement. (To be clear, we believe that very high failure rate reflects self-selection in who responded to the survey and not the actual noncompliance rate.)
• As to the specific deadline provided in the contract, we received 470 responses, of which 258 (54.9 percent) said that the deadline was three months from publication.

Of course, these results by themselves do not prove that a breach of contract has occurred in any individual case. As with all contracts, that determination would require an examination of the specific contractual terms. And we would need more information to determine how many of these books would have been eligible for the Anthropic settlement but for the publisher’s failure to register (e.g., were they actually downloaded by Anthropic in 2021 or 2022 from LibGen or PiLiMi, respectively). But these responses do signal that the problem of publishers failing to register copyrights is not limited to a few isolated cases. Hundreds of authors have reported that, at least in their view, their publisher failed to comply with its contractual registration obligation.

The responses also suggest that publishers’ failure to register is a recent and potentially ongoing problem. Of the 804 books for which the publisher reportedly failed to comply with a registration requirement, 321 were published between 2019 and 2025. This is consistent with anecdotal evidence we have received about publishers falling behind in their registration processes during the pandemic.

How to Protect Yourself

Ultimately, these results reinforce the critical need for authors and agents to insist that specific, enforceable registration requirements be included in their publishing contracts.

• If your publisher does not have these in its standard contract, you should insist that it add them. We have provided information here about what these terms should look like as well as how you can register your manuscripts yourself if your publisher fails to do so.
• In addition, we have proposed a new model contract provision for registration, which would establish a process that would make it more likely the title does get registered.

While it is unfortunately too late to be included in the Anthropic settlement if your book wasn’t registered within the required time period, registration is essential to ensure that your work is fully protected going forward, including in future AI litigation awards. The Anthropic settlement is a reminder to authors and publishers alike that copyrights are meaningless if they cannot be enforced, and that timely copyright registration is essential to enforcement.