By Andrew Richard Albanese, Editor
‘There is no basis in the settlement agreement for the conclusion that the author’s share should be limited to the [royalty rate].’
In a release this week, representatives from the Textbook & Academic Authors Association (TAA) announced that Sage Publishing has agreed to send a “corrective email” to authors, after sending an earlier—allegedly misleading—email advising authors on what share to claim from any proceeds due from AI company Anthropic’s landmark $1.5 billion copyright infringement settlement.
The announcement comes after a TAA member on December 12 passed along an email from Sage that directed her to claim a share of the settlement proceeds that matched the contractual 10% royalty rate in her contract, and warned that entering a different split on the claim form could result in a delay in receiving their settlement funds.
In response, TAA filed a December 18 motion with the court seeking to compel Sage to send the curative notice. With Sage now consenting to the notice, TAA has agreed to withdraw the motion, and Sage authors are expected to receive a corrective email any day now.
“It is inappropriate, to my mind, for the publishers to be telling authors how to fill out their claim forms,” explained TAA executive director Kim Pawlak, in a statement. “Publishers and authors may have different views about how the settlement proceeds should be split. The Court adopted an appropriate and expedited process for resolving these disputes; Sage suggested to the contrary, that to claim anything other than what Sage has told authors to claim would lead to undue delay.”
In a post on its website, TAA reps acknowledged that “conflict is implicit from the structure of the settlement, as for each work the publishers and authors must allocate the proceeds in a zero-sum exercise” but said the “average author” that received Sage’s email may not have recognized that the message was “a self-interested communication” from the publisher.
“There is no basis in the settlement agreement for the conclusion that the author’s share should be limited to the ‘royalty rate you receive for a sale of your Work,’ and most textbook publishing agreements contain other clauses that govern the allocation of revenues associated with licensing (as opposed to sales), to which this settlement is more akin,” Pawlak explained.
While the court has set a 50/50 default split for trade and university press books in the settlement, the court approved a separate process for determining the split for educational and textbook publishers. That said, TAA reps said that, after reviewing “a cross-section of textbook publishing agreements,” that the “prevalent standard” should be a 50/50 split between authors and publishers.
If there is a disagreement over the split—as there is bound to be in a settlement of this size—the process provides for a Claims Administrator to facilitate a resolution. Furthermore, if that resolution is not satisfactory, the deal allows for “a neutral special master” to determine the proper split. “Textbook authors generally lack the legal and financial resources of textbook publishers, and that is why it is so crucial that there be a fair process for determining what authors are paid for the infringement of their works,” says Pawlak.
Meanwhile, two key deadlines for the settlement are approaching: the deadline for those wishing to opt-out of the settlement and/or to object is January 15 (though the parties have jointly moved to push this out to January 29); and the deadline to file a claim is March 30, 2026.
In a January 8 post on the TAA blog, TAA reps also shared the results of a recent survey, which found that roughly half of respondents said they had already filed claims (31 of 60 respondents). And while most respondents said that their publisher had not contacted them about how to complete their claim form, four said their publisher had, with three saying their publisher “had asked them to claim a specific percentage on their claim form and that they had done so.”
In its guidance, TAA reps have urged authors with eligible works to stay engaged—and to file claims, even if it feels like the process may be cumbersome, as there is potentially significant money at stake. While initial estimates put payments at roughly $3,000 per book to be split between authors and publishers, that figure could rise depending on the number of claims received.
Underscoring the potential windfall at stake, in a December 19 post, Dave Hansen, executive director of the U.S.-based Authors Alliance, did a a little “back-of-the-envelope” math, finding that of the $1.5 billion settlement figure, approximately $1.18 billion is likely to flow to rightsholders after attorneys’ requested fees and other costs are deducted (although the subject of attorneys’ fees in this case is still unresolved by the court).
“We still don’t know quite a bit about how the money will flow in this settlement, but a few things are becoming clearer,” Hansen, who has done some excellent analysis on the Anthropic litigation and the settlement, wrote. “First, the lawyers stand to do very well—potentially earning around $6,500 per hour if the court approves something close to their requested $300 million in fees. Second, major publishers are likely to claim tens of millions of dollars from the settlement, with some of the largest potentially receiving payouts in the $20-30 million range. Third, and most importantly for the authors who this suit was ostensibly designed to benefit, individual author payouts could vary wildly depending on participation rates—from over $20,000 per work if claim rates stay low, down to around $1,200-$2,400 per work if participation approaches the full class.”