Writers are opening their inboxes to find that their share of a massive $1.5 billion payout is getting claimed by someone else. And that someone else might not deserve it.

The payout comes from Anthropic’s copyright settlement. A judge ruled last year that training AI on copyrighted books is legal under fair use. 

But pirating those books to do it was crossing a line. Anthropic agreed to pay up, and the deal got final approval this past July.

Now the money is supposed to flow, but things just took another turn.

Settlement

The deal covers close to 500,000 titles and each pirated book earns its author $3,000.

If a book is still in print with a traditional publisher, the payment splits equally. Author gets half and tublisher gets half.

But if a writer self-published their book, they should get the whole $3,000. Same goes if the publisher let the book go out of print and gave the rights back to the author. 

That is called a rights reversion.

Angry Writers

Mystery and thriller writer April Henry posted her frustration on Threads. She said HarperCollins claimed a book of hers that reverted back to her at least 17 years ago. 

On the same day, she got a credit alert claiming HarperCollins was her employer. She said that never happened.

Author advocate Victoria Strauss runs the popular blog Writers Beware. She has been collecting complaints from writers all week.

She found two main problems. First, some publishers are claiming books they no longer have any legal right to. 

Second, some publishers are asking for the full 100% payment when they should only get half.

Strauss said she does not want to jump straight to blaming bad intentions. Sloppy recordkeeping could explain a lot of this. 

Some publishers have even admitted the mistake and asked Anthropic to correct it.

A Mistake?

Mary Rasenberger leads the Authors Guild, a group that protects writers’ rights. She spoke with The New York Times about the outrage.

Rasenberger does not think publishers are deliberately trying to cheat anyone. She called it the natural result of messy records and a confusing claims process, not an intentional grab.

Still, Strauss is not fully convinced this is just bad luck. She noted that she has heard the same complaints repeated over and over, from many different authors. That pattern worries her.

She wrote that this many identical errors do not usually happen by accident on this scale. Something else might be going on.

She also added a fair point of caution. The complaints she has seen so far are just a small window into a much larger process. 

Thousands of claims are moving through this system every day.

Agents

Literary agents are also filing claims on settlement money, and that has authors even more upset.

Strauss called this surprising. Agents typically do not hold any legal rights to the books they help sell. 

They work on commission, representing authors in deals. They are not usually considered rightsholders.

Author Courtney Milan, whose real name is Heidi Bond, is a former law clerk and law professor.

She posted on Bluesky that agents trying to claim a percentage of this settlement make no sense to her at all. 

Fighting Back

The good news is that writers are not powerless here. Milan and the Authors Guild have both shared guidance on disputing incorrect claims, which involves timing.

To claim the full 100% payment, an author’s rights reversion needs to have happened before August 10, 2022. 

That date matters because it lines up with what the settlement calls the download date, which is when Anthropic is believed to have obtained the pirated files.

If the rights reverted after that date, your claim gets more complicated. Authors in that situation may need extra documentation to prove their case.