Anthropic Copyright Settlement: Publishers Are Making Incorrect Claims on Authors’ Payouts

This week, many authors who are part of the Anthropic copyright class action settlement began receiving notices like this one:

Upon accessing the portal (which doesn’t seem to have a formal name, so I’ll call it the “disgreement portal”), many of those authors made an unwelcome discovery: their publishers are making claims on their allocations (aka the payouts for their works) that are simply…wrong.

(Just to note, since several people have asked me this: as far as I know, you only get a notice if there’s a disagreement. So if, like me, you haven’t received anything, there’s no disagreement and nothing you need to do.) UPDATE: Oops, looks like I was wrong. Some authors are getting notices inviting them to review their claim summary, with no mention of an “allocation difference”. I’ll try to get one of these so I can add it.

Wrongful Claims

Just to refresh: per the stipulations of the settlement, authors who’ve self-published, or whose contracts have terminated, or who have reverted the rights to their published books, can claim 100% of the allocation. The publisher isn’t entitled to a share.

For in-print books, the settlement imposes a 50/50 split (the “default split”) between author and publisher (this is based on common publishing contract language that divides recovery in copyright infringement litigation equally between publisher and author).

Publishers

Most of the reports I’m receiving fall into two categories: publishers making 50% or 100% claims on rights-reverted works (where they should receive no share), and publishers making 100% claims on in-print works (where their share should be 50%).

Being a fairly cautious person, I’m always reluctant to attribute to malice what can be plausibly explained by poor recordkeeping (or poor checking of that recordkeeping)–and do I suspect that poor records, or poor checking, or overworked or inexperienced staff assigned to the task, are responsible for many if not most of the wrongful claims on rights-reverted works. Not that that’s an excuse–especially where multiple books are involved (one author told me that 16 of their rights-reverted books were being claimed; another had 11).

For the wrongful 100% claims on in-print books, it’s harder to figure what’s going on. Since several Kensington Publishing authors reported such claims, I reached out to Kensington CEO Steve Zacharius for comment; he indicated that it wasn’t Kensington’s intent to claim 100%, and told me that Anthropic was aware of the issue and was correcting it. Three other publishers, when contacted by authors, said essentially the same thing. (UPDATE: On Bluesky, McFarland has said the same.) Given this, and the fact that so many authors are reporting the exact same wrongful claim by multiple different publishers, I can’t help wondering if, rather than greed or evil, some kind of glitch in the settlement claims system is responsible for the errors. Or maybe it’s an artifact of batch claims by publishers? I don’t know.

Publishers and imprints reported (I will add to these lists as information comes my way):

• 50% or 100% claims on rights-reverted works: Bloomsbury, Kensington, Harlequin, Silhouette, Ballantine, Siren Bookstrand, HarperCollins, Little Brown, Macmillan, Tor, Feiwel & Friends, Angry Robot, Hachette, Grand Central, Orbit US, Globe Pequot, Titan Publishing, Astra Publishing House, Simon & Schuster, North Star Editions, Baen, Tekno, Penguin Random House, Albert Whitman (!!! AW is in bankruptcy proceedings), Desktop Broadcasting Inc., Red Hen Press, Sourcebooks.
• 100% claims on in-print works: Rutgers University Press, Johns Hopkins University Press, Georgetown University Press, West Virginia University Press, Kensington, Scholastic, New Harbinger, Abrams, McFarland, Red Wheel/Weiser, Page Street Publishers, Bolinda Audio. (Odd how many university presses are in this category.)

Literary Agents

Before the claims filing window closed, I heard rumors that some literary agents were considering making claims on books they’d sold. The general consensus among people I talked to about this was “Nope”. The Anthropic settlement arose from a class action lawsuit; the class, and therefore those eligible to participate in the settlement, is limited to rightsholders. Agents are not rightsholders in the books they sell.

It appears, though, that at least some agents don’t agree. So far this morning, I’ve heard from five authors with six different agencies that have made claims for between 15% and 25% of the allocation on books they repped. Speaking as an author, I would absolutely contest those claims.

Educational Publishers

Educational publishers (defined in FAQ #22 on the settlement website as publishers that “specialize in creating and publishing works, including but not limited to textbooks, for the instruction of students and professionals, which are distributed for and through educational and professional markets,”) are exempt from the default split.

I’ve heard from authors with Wiley and Pearson that the publishers are claiming between 75% and 90% of the allocation. This isn’t necessarily a wrongful claim, but I’ve seen advice to contest it anyway and let the settlement administrator sort it out.

Other Discrepancies

I’ve also heard about a number of issues that fall more into the types of snafus or opportunism you might expect in a massive claims process around works that are in sometimes extremely complicated publishing arrangements.

• A book originally published in the UK whose author and publisher are each properly claiming 50% but whose US publisher is claiming 100%
• A trade publisher claiming a higher percentage than the 50/50 default
• Works by a defunct publisher that are being claimed by a company the authors have never heard of
• Conflicting claims around anthologies and individual stories in anthologies
• A self-published book that somehow, between the author filing a claim and the correction notices going out, acquired PRH as an additional rights holder
• A rights-reverted book with an outstanding audio contract where the audio publisher is making a 100% claim
• An in-print book with the same audio publisher, also making a 100% claim
• An author whose publisher probably filed a claim, but who missed the deadline to file their own claim. Per the settlement FAQ #46, this wouldn’t necessarily lock the author out of the settlement, but any payment would presumably be up to the other party.

What Should You Do If You Receive a Notice?

If there’s a claim on your work that seems wrong to you, follow the process to make corrections.

Gather documentation: rights reversion letters, publishing contracts (look for language in the Copyright clause that stipulates an equal split between you and the publisher of any recovery from copyright litigation), anything else that supports the correction you want to make.

Access the disagreement portal. It’s here: https://secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/allocation. You’ll need both a claim number and a PIN, both of which should appear on the notice you received.

If there’s a disagreement, you’ll see it on the Disagreements page. There’s a No Disagreements page too, for works with no conflicting claims. You can access it at the link above even if you haven’t received a notice.

Review the information, make the corrections, and upload any supporting documentation. Instructions for doing that are here. You’re supposed to get an email confirming your corrections.

Additional suggestion: if your publisher is making a wrongful claim, contact it to ask why. I’m guessing that many publishers will respond that it’s a mistake, especially with the 100% claims on in-print books. It can’t hurt to get that in writing.

Some authors are encountering portal glitches (the portal won’t log their corrections) or expressing frustration with the instructions, including the lack of clarity on what happens after corrections are filed. Author Shelley Powers has written about this.

Helpful social media threads from Courtney Milan, who has been on top of the Anthropic settlement from the start:

• On the general process of correcting a claim
• On what to do if a publisher makes a claim on a rights-reverted book

How Big Are These Problems?

My guess: big.

Obviously I can’t say for sure–it’s a huge settlement, with tens of thousands of authors and hundreds of thousands of works. So any insight I have is just a peek through a small crack in a massive wall.

But the unusually large number of reports I’ve received over the last two days, as well as the fact that authors are reporting the exact same errors over and over, suggest to me that these aren’t the kind of routine glitches you might expect from such a large operation, but something much more widepread and systemic.

I’ll continue to report on all of this as information comes my way. Stay tuned for updates.

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