Authors expecting their cut of Anthropic’s $1.5 billion copyright settlement received surprising emails this week. Notifications landed in their inboxes informing them that outside parties were filing payment claims against their books.
Anthropic settled a class action lawsuit last year after a judge ruled that training software models on copyrighted books falls under legal fair use, but downloading pirated books does not. The settlement received final court approval in July, clearing administrators to process payout funds.
Under the agreed terms, creators of nearly 500,000 titles receive $3,000 per pirated work. If a book remains in print with a traditional publisher, funds split evenly between the writer and the publisher. If an author self-published the book or regained full rights after a contract ended, the writer gets the full payout.
However, writers are taking to social media to report that traditional publishers are laying claim to money they do not own. Mystery writer April Henry publicly questioned why her former publisher claimed a payout for a book whose rights reverted to her 17 years ago. She added that she received a notification stating the publisher added itself as her employer on the exact same day.
At the popular blog Writer Beware, Victoria Strauss noted that author complaints fall into two major groups. In the first group, publishers demand payouts for books where rights already reverted to the author. In the second group, publishers demand a full 100 percent payout when contract terms entitle them to only 50 percent.
Strauss noted that poor recordkeeping explains part of the problem, pointing out that several publishers called the extra claims accidental system errors and asked Anthropic to fix the records.
Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger told news outlets that she views the issue as a predictable outcome of bad recordkeeping and confusing administration rather than an intentional cash grab by corporate publishers.
Still, Strauss emphasized that the sheer volume of matching reports points to wider systemic issues across the publishing sector.
Publishers are not the only ones attempting to take a cut of the settlement. Strauss reported receiving complaints about literary agencies claiming percentages of author payouts, a move that surprised industry observers since agents hold no direct rights in the books they sell.
Author Courtney Milan criticized these agency moves online, stating that literary agents have no legal right to claim percentages on direct copyright settlement checks.
Milan and the Authors Guild published detailed guides explaining how writers can contest disputed payment claims. The process includes specific cutoff rules. To claim a full 100 percent payout on a book with reverted rights, the contract termination must have occurred before August 10, 2022, based on settlement database rules.
When large settlements distribution plans launch, sloppy historical recordkeeping creates massive headaches for individual creators. Authors must actively review their payment dashboards, double-check rights reversion dates, and file formal disputes to keep outside parties from taking money meant for the original creators.