For the second time in four years, the Association of American Literary Agents (AALA) has updated its Canon of Ethics.

The last time, in 2022, the major changes related to packaging and producer fees for clients’ TV and film deals (with members prohibited from participating), and to the growing practice of agents doubling as paid editors. Where the old Canon included a blanket prohibition on paid editing, the update created guidelines designed to allow the practice but head off the more common abuses. Member agents were prohibited from making editing a condition of representation, and required to offer paid editing services only to writers who approached them for that specific purpose (i.e., no bait-and-switch conversion of prospective represntation clients to editing clients). And if they subsequently offered the editing client representation, they had to reimburse all editing fees.

The current update is more sweeping. Most of the revisions are focused on the rapidly-growing trend of agents offering paid services other than editing to clients and non-clients, and, the AALA explains in its discussion of the changes, are intended to establish guardrails to prevent these new practices from being abused, while not constraining member agents’ ability to run their businesses and make a living.

They aren’t totally successful, in my view. And beyond the Canon itself, I think the issues the revisions address pose some troubling questions for the agent profession as a whole.

The revised Canon, which takes effect September 1, can be seen here.

What Has Changed?

Much of the old language remains, such as the prohibition on reading fees and the guidelines on payment and accounting. But some clauses have been overhauled, new clauses have been added, and the Canon as a whole has been re-organized and re-formatted to be more streamlined and easier to read.

Clause 2: Fiduciary. This new clause includes most of the language that appeared in Clause 5 of the old Canon (prohibiting agents from representing both buyer and seller in the same transaction, prohibiting agents from participating in packging fees for film/TV deals or accepting producer fees without the client’s consent) but also adds a paragraph defining the role of a fiduciary.

Clause 6: Payments from Third Parties; Referral Fees. The old Canon prohibited members from “solicit[ing] or accept[ing] any payment or other thing of value in connection with their referral of any author to any third party for any purpose.”

The new Canon both expands this–making clear that agents can make third party referrals (which many are already doing), though they must do so “with the client’s best interests in mind”–and softens it. Secret profits are still prohibited, but while members are forbidden to seek or solicit payments or items of value in return for the referral, referrals to third parties that are “known to pay referral fees or other things of value to those who refer to them” are okay, as long as the agent discloses to the client what they’ve received and the client is “agreeable to such an arrangement.”

For me, the acceptance of something of value in return for a referral is always a conflict of interest, whether or not the agent solicited the thing of value or admitted they received it. Requiring disclosure doesn’t necessarily mitigate that, unless the agent also has to disclose how often they refer to the third party in question (i.e., are the referrals a pattern, in which case the agent may be pursuing their own benefit rather than the client’s).

Clause 8: No Reading Fees. Members are still prohibited from charging reading fees. The section allowing members to receive payment for teaching classes or from writers’ conferences has been expanded to emphasize that such compensation can’t come directly from creators.

Clause 9: Paid-For Editorial Services. This section has been shortened and simplified, with a major component under the old Canon–the prohibition on converting writers who query for representation into clients of paid services–moved to Clause 11. Members still can’t charge clients for editorial services, but if a non-client who buys editing is later offered reperesentation, “the treatment of monies paid for editorial services performed prior to representation shall be subject to mutual agreement between the member and the prospective client.”

This walks back the language of the old Canon, which required the agent to reimburse editing fees if they later offered representation. Removing that obligation weakens the disincentive to double dip by converting service clients to representation clients, since the agent only has to “mutually agree” with the client on how to deal with the fees. How many eager writers, with a representation offer in hand, will protest a “mutual agreement” not to be reimbursed?

Clause 10: Other Paid-For Services Offered to Clients. This is a new clause. It allows members to “employ staff or specialists to aid clients in other areas such as marketing, promotion, web design, or other work, for a fee to be mutually agreed” but prohibits making representation contingent on the client buying such services, and requires members to inform clients of this.

I see potential problems here as well. The required disclosure doesn’t remove the possibility that the agent might pressure the writer to buy in–maybe not overtly, but via more roundabout methods: overstating the benefits of purchasing the agent’s marketing services, for example. Too, the lopsided balance of power between author and agent–especially if the author is new and inexperienced–exerts a pressure to consent. I see this play out in questions I get from writers who have concerns about some aspect of their relationship with their agent but are afraid to voice it for fear of consequences to their manuscripts.

Clause 11: Paid-For Services Offered to Non-Clients. Another new clause. Members can offer not just editing services to non-clients, but also “non-editorial services (e.g. web design, social media consultation, creation of promotional content”). They must state in writing that buying services won’t necessarily lead to representation, and if they don’t offer the service personally, they must disclose who will provide it and their relationship to the member.

As I’ve noted, the language prohibiting client conversion at the query stage has been moved here. Quoting in full: “To avoid the possibility of abuse, members may not respond to an author who approaches them only for literary representation by instead directing the author to pay for services by the member or by anyone financially associated with the member or the member’s agency.” I’m glad to see this language is still included; again, though, there’s a workaround, in that nothing in this clause prevents the agent from providing paid services to a non-client who they know they are likely to later want to represent. And this clause doesn’t even include the directive for “mutual agreement” on reimbursement.

Clause 12: Publishing. This too is new language. Quoting in full again: “While the AALA does not encourage its members to act as publishers of their clients’ work because of the inherent conflicts, doing so may be permissible if the member and client fully execute the ‘Consent Regarding Publication’ or a similar agreement containing all of its substantive provisions.”

The AALA says the Consent document “delineates the ways in which the roles of agent and publisher differ”, but though there’s a link, it’s behind a member login so I don’t know what it includes. Again, though, the emphasis is on “transparency and consent”, which doesn’t necessarily rule out the conflicts of interest the clause acknowledges.

UPDATE: I meant to include this, but pressed “publish” too soon.

A surprising omission from the revisions is any language addressing AI. According to PW’s article on the revisions, though, this is something the AALA is looking at.

Guidelines around AI usage are notably absent from this round of revisions, though AI use ranked as one of the top concerns among agents in a recent AALA survey. [AALA president Regina] Brooks said the AALA has begun circulating information internally and among members, but is “waiting for things to settle out” before formalizing anything.

Whither the Agent Profession?

The Canon has an enforcement mechanism, in the form of writers’ ability to make a complaint about an agent to the AALA’s Ethics Committee. But it is essentially an honor system, and an honor system is only as good as people’s honor. I do think that most people prefer to be ethical, and I’m certain that most agents adhere to the Canon in good faith.

Still, I’m concerned about the new permissiveness around third-party referrals and the walkback of the editing fee return requirement, both of which, I think, create troubling ethical loopholes. And as I’ve described above, I worry especially about the gray areas surrounding paid-for services. As Jane Friedman notes in her assessment of the new Canon,

The problem lies in the power imbalance in the agent-author relationship. Disclosure doesn’t prevent abuse of power, and I’m especially concerned for first-time authors or clients who may only be able to get responses from agents who earn money from services, not sale….Over the last five to 10 years, I have seen an absolute explosion of educational and service offerings from agents (and others). Some have little experience or credibility in the market; they don’t sell books for a living but sell a dream and take advantage of writers who think they’re getting that access or secrets to a book deal.

If agents can’t make sufficient money selling books and want to get into author services, why not leave agenting and become a service business? While this may be too cynical on my part, I can’t help but observe that one of the easiest ways to attract attention to your offerings—or get conference invites—is to put out your shingle as an agent. This latest revision to the Canon of Ethics may encourage more such prospecting.

This–which former agent Nathan Bransford dubs “the rise of the schmagent”–could signal a return to the old days of questionable agenting, where the agent’s main source of income was fees for services, and the promise of representation was little more than a bait-and-switch.

Canon or no Canon, the shift toward services is already happening. When the Canon was created, back in the pre-digital era, the worst abuse it needed to address was the dishonest use of reading fees; times sure have changed, and the speed with which that’s taking place is evidenced by the fact that this new revision comes just four years after the previous one. The AALA is essentially playing catchup, adapting their ethical guardrails to address business practices that already exist and are being widely adopted–and that, if room isn’t made for them within the organization, will likely lead to dwindling membership and consequent erosion of the AALA’s status as an arbiter of acceptable business practice. (In my opinion the AALA already weakened itself with its decision a few years ago to eliminate competency requirements for membership, but that’s a whole other discussion.)

There’s also a bigger question. With all of these new roles and business practices, what happens to agents’ core function: the representation of authors’ work to publishers and the sale of rights? Even if an agency isn’t a schmagency, but is also a PR company and a tech company and maybe some other kind of company as well, how does it allocate resources betwen the different functions? If the agency side–which by definition involves unpaid labor, since not every manuscript in which agents invest time and effort will wind up finding a home–is less lucrative than the editing or marketing side, will the agency side be neglected? What happens when a core function gets pushed to the periphery?

I’m guessing in the next few years we’ll be finding out.

(Note: This section and the one below have been updated to incude mention of Nathan Bransford’s essay.)

Be Careful Out There

Whatever all of this means for the agent profession, it’s yet another minefield for writers, and yet another reason to do careful reseaarch when choosing whom to query. Both Jane Friedman and Nathan Bransford urge writers to resist the mystique that surrounds agents and look at them with clear eyes, and I agree.

Jane and Nathan both offer helpful suggestions for doing that. To those, I’d add some things to consider if you’re thinking of querying an agency with a service side:

• Is the agent an AALA member? The Canon may not be perfect, but it does offer assurance against major abuses. That’s not to say that non-AALA members aren’t entirely ethical. But with AALA members, you know a bit more going in.
• Does the agency’s online presence place the major emphasis on services, or on representation?
• How does the agency’s track record of sales compare with its service side (i.e., if it has an active service side but has placed relatively few books, that could suggest representation isn’t its main priority).
• Has it placed clients with hybrid publishers (some of which are known to pay referral fees)?
• What can you discover about client crossover between the service side and the agency side?
• Most important: how does what you see match your needs and goals for your writing career?

The post The AALA Makes Significant Updates to Its Canon of Ethics appeared first on Writer Beware.

On Tuesday, Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín granted final approval to the historic class action settlement in the Bartz v Anthropic copyright infringement lawsuit.

At $1.5 billion, it’s the largest recovery ever in a copyright infringement suit, penalizing Anthropic for downloading, storing, and copying pirated datasets consisting of millions of illegally uploaded books in order to use them for AI training. (If you need a refresher, my past blog posts include a general overview of the settlement and the issues surrounding it and an April update.)

Judge Martínez-Olguín’s ruling can be seen here.

Top Takeaways

• Attorneys’ fees have been reduced. Class attorneys had requested 12.5% of the settlement fund, or $187.5 million, plus expenses of $2.5 million and a cost reserve of another $18 million (out of which the settlement administrator would be paid). Rather than a percentage-of-settlement, the judge chose to use a different method of calculation, reducing fees to $101.5 million; this works out to 6.8% of the settlement fund, as opposed to the 12.5% requested–which itself was a reduction from lawyers’ original ask of 20%. The judge granted the expense and cost reserve requests.
• Service awards to class representatives have been reduced. The original request was $50,000 for each of the three class representatives. While acknowledging the time and effort the representatives contributed to the case, the judge deemed those amounts “unreasonable”, and reduced the awards to $15,000 apiece.

These reductions should slightly increase the payout to authors. The math:

• All objections to the settlement are overruled. There were quite a number of these, including objections to the notification process, objections to the composition of the Works list, objections to the copyright registration requirement (which locked large numbers of authors and pirated works out of the settlement), objections to the size of the settlement (too low), objections to the attorneys’ fees and expense requests (too high), and objections seeking miscellaneous (and in some cases somewhat absurd) additional relief.
• Late opt-out requests have also been overruled–with two exceptions. There weren’t a lot of these requests, and the judge deemed that most of them hadn’t shown the “excusable neglect” that would justify approving them. Not so for Laura Esquivel and Jordi Castells, whose requests the judge granted. As it happens, both Esquivel and Castells are plaintiffs in a group of joined lawsuits recently filed by 100 authors and publishers who opted out of the settlement.

The Big Winners, Though? Publishers

The terms of the settlement require publishers and authors to split the per-work payout 50/50 (assuming that publishing contracts are still in force and both parties file a claim). The split is a somewhat arbitrary figure based on a common provision in publishing contracts stipulating that authors and publishers share equally in the recovery from any copyright suits.

This is a sore point with authors, many of whom feel that they are the parties most damaged by pirating and AI training, and shouldn’t have to cut their publishers in on a payout which, though higher than the common award in copyright cases ($750 according to the settlement agreement) is very far short of the $150,000 statutory maximum for willful infringement.

This recent announcement from Bloomsbury demonstrates the lopsided benefit publishers will derive:

14,087 titles x $1,500 (half the estimated $3,000 payout) = $21,130,500.

I posted Bloomsbury’s announcement on social media yesterday.

The response was…sour.

What’s Next?

In many class action settlements, the number of claims isn’t enough to exhaust the settlement fund. This doesn’t necessarily mean more money for those who do respond: settlement terms may direct any excess to be distributed to charity, or it may fall to the court to decide where the extra money goes.

The Anthropic settlement ensures that the entire settlement fund, less attorneys’ fees and expenses, goes to claimants, regardless of how many or how few claims there are. Fewer claims, in other words, means higher payouts. Participation in class action settlements is typically miserable (below 10% on average, according to some estimates), and at the start of the claims process there was speculation that claimants could receive much more than the estimated $3,000 per work payout figure. But participation has been unusually robust: 91.3% according to the motion for final approval, with claims filed for 440,490 of the 482,460 works on the elgible works list. So even with the reduction in attorneys’ fees, any increase will be modest.

When might claimants start to see the money? Per the settlement agreement,

The “effective date” is defined as “the later of” the date on which the time to file an appeal expires (30 days after final approval) or the date on which the resolution of an appeal either upholds approval of the settlement or is dismissed. So…checks could start going out in August. Or, if there’s an appeal, some much later time.

Additionally, Anthropic is depositing funds into the settlement account in four tranches, the last of which isn’t due until 2027 (though Anthropic can choose to deposit earlier)–so it seems likely that payments will go out in waves, or be broken into installments, rather than disbursed all at once. There may also be disputes among rightsholders to be resolved, delaying payments to individuals (a Special Master has been appointed to adjudicate such disputes). Not to mention, simply managing such a massive number of payouts is a monumental task.

Bottom line: no one knows exactly when checks will start arriving. Estimates I’ve seen range from sometime in September to, according to one lawyer I’m in touch with, “not in 2026.”

More Reading

Courtney Milan on the timing of Anthropic’s contributions to the settlement fund and when writers might expect to be paid.

Authors Guild on final approval.

Ars Technica on final approval (including Anthropic’s effort to block late opt-outs)

UPATE 8/8/26: Some information on payment timelines, from the Textbook & Academic Authors Association–assuming no one appeals the final settlement (the 30-day time period in which to do that ends on August 19).

Payments will also be made in two stages, roughly 70% in the first stage and 30% in the second, as Anthropic will be making settlement payments in installments through September 2027.

If no appeals are filed, an online portal will be launched by the end of August that contains claimants’ consolidated claim forms. The portal will include the title of each work, its copyright number, the names of other claimants and the percentages each are claiming. If the claim percentages match for all claimants of a work, said Class Counsel, funds will be dispersed via the method submitted by each claimant.

The article also discusses the dispute resolution process (for example, if you and your publisher disagree on percentage splits).

The post Anthropic Settlement Update: Final Settlement Approved appeared first on Writer Beware.

We’re currently waiting for Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin to issue final approval of the historic settlement in the Bartz v, Anthropic copyright infringement lawsuit. (If you need a refresher, my past blog posts include a general overview of the settlement and an April update.)

One of the interesting outcomes–so far–has been that while participation by class members has been extraordinarily robust (91.3%, with claims filed for 440,490 of the 482,460 works on the elgible works list), the number of class members who opted out has been quite small–just 350, according to a motion for final approval filed by plaintiffs in March (the opt-out deadline was February 9).

Opting out preserved those individuals’ right to sue Anthropic on their own. And indeed, in recent months, several lawsuits have been filed, representing approximately a third of the writers who opted out. Each suit is interesting in its own way.

Carreyrou v. Anthropic

If you’ve been following the progress of the settlement, you may remember a group called ClaimsHero. A law firm whose leadership team members do not appear to have law degrees, ClaimsHero got in trouble last year with the court over its attempts to recruit Anthropic class members for representation in alternative copyright lawsuits, using the lure of a higher payout (since the settlement will pay around $3,000 but the statutory maximum for willful copyright infringement is $150,000) without adequately disclosing to potential clients that signing with ClaimsHero meant authorizing ClaimsHero to opt them out of the settlement. (I wrote about this at the time.)

ClaimsHero was forced to change its recruitment and advertising tactics. However, it continued to seek clients, and in December 2025, its efforts bore fruit: six authors, including author and journalist John Carreyrou, filed suits against Anthropic and several other AI companies, based on allegations similar to those that led to the settlement they’d opted out of: that the AI companies had infringed their copyrights by copying and storing pirated books in order to use them for AI training.

The suits, which seek a judgment of willful infringement, statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work, and attorney fees and expenses, are being litigated not by ClaimsHero (one of the things that came out when ClaimsHero was hauled into court was that it had no litigation experience) but by a partner law firm. You’ll also notice that I said suits, plural. The Carreyrou filing isn’t a class action, but six individual lawsuits related by a common cause of action and filed together.

Class action settlements, the plaintiffs argue, serve defendants rather than creators, sidestepping creators’ right to have statutory damages individually determined and allowing companies like Anthropic to “easily extinguish thousands upon thousands of high-value claims at bargain-basement rates, eliding what should be the true cost of their massive willful infringement.”

This unusual approach, with individual cases joined together into a single action, is used by third-party claims filers, companies that specialize in recruiting claimants in class action settlements and batch-filing individual claims on their behalf. The tactic doesn’t always pan out, and whether it will succeed here remains to be seen. The plaintiffs have already suffered a setback, with most of the AI companies named in the original complaint severed from the case. The case has also been consolidated with several other infringement cases against Anthropic.

Back to ClaimsHero for a minute…ClaimsHero’s recruitment efforts have been aggressive. Between February and April, I got at least seven of these emails.

“Potentially” in that first bullet point is doing a lot of work; as far as I know, the Carreyrou action is the only one ClaimsHero has facilitated to date. And although I haven’t gotten a solicitation in a while, ClaimsHero is still recruiting–and there’s still some, well, lack of transparency. Here’s its current website pitch:

But wait, you’re thinking, where is that $750k per work figure coming from? Isn’t $150k the maximum for statutory damages in a copyright suit? Well, yes, and ClaimsHero does clarify that, but only if you bother to scan down the page to find the asterisk:

This is the same kind of bait-and-switch advertising as calorie claims on food packaging that don’t mention that the calorie count is per serving.

Daniel Benjamin Gilbert v. Anthropic

This second infringement case filed by an author who opted out of the Anthropic settlement touches on a sore issue for writers who did not opt out: they must split their payouts with their publishers if their contracts are still in force and the publisher files a claim.

Originally filed in May and amended on July 7, Gilbert’s complaint makes familiar allegations (infringement based on Anthropic’s copying and storage of pirated books) and seeks familiar relief (including full statutory damages, attorney fees and costs, and destruction of the infringed material). However, Gilbert also wants to make sure his publisher, Wiley, can’t share any of the proceeds.

Gilbert says that he notified Wiley in writing of Anthropic’s infringement, and “asked Wiley to advise within thirty days whether it intended to pursue the claim, and stated that if Wiley did not, he would proceed as provided in Paragraph 16.” Wiley did not respond within that time. Later, however, it notified Gilbert that it had submitted a claim under the settlement–but that the claim was moot thanks to Gilbert’s opt-out (under the terms of the settlement, an opt-out by one rightsholder opts out all other rightsholders as well).

The question here is whether, should Gilbert win his case, Wiley could claim a share of the recovery by arguing that making a claim under the settlement counted under Paragraph 16, despite the opt-out issue and even though it took more than 30 days to respond to Gilbert’s notification. Gilbert argues that it can’t: “Because Wiley declined to pursue the claim after Plaintiff’s request, as between Plaintiff and Wiley any recovery in this action, which Plaintiff prosecutes at his own expense, belongs solely to the Author, and Wiley has no contractual entitlement to share in it.”

Whether a court will agree remains to be seen. It’ll be interesting to watch how this particular case unfolds.

UPDATE: Mr. Gilbert has contacted me, and given me permission to publish this statement.

Twenty years ago, thousands of ordinary people were called thieves for downloading a few pirated songs. They were pushed into settlements for thousands of dollars or, if they fought back, were subject to judgments of hundreds of thousands more (including one Massachusetts student ordered to pay $675,000 for 30 songs). Anthropic downloaded millions of pirated books, including mine. The Bartz settlement offered a payment with no acknowledgment of wrongdoing and no apology. I opted out because I wanted the chance to pursue accountability. Anthropic is a public benefit corporation and I expect them to live up to that standard and take responsibility for their actions.

Shakespeare v. Anthropic

Filed June 17, this is the most recent infringement suit by Anthropic settlement opt-outs. Defendants are not just Anthropic, but Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s co-founder and CEO, and Benjamin Mann, who is identified as “a founder and member of the technical staff of Anthropic” and who the suit alleges personally handled the downloading of the pirate datasets that included the plaintffs’ books.

Plaintiffs bring this case to address Defendants’ unlawful downloading and exploitation of their works from library websites known to consist of pirated works by using BitTorrent, a file-sharing technology widely used for mass copyright infringement. Defendants downloaded works by torrenting an enormous number of unauthorized copies of Plaintiffs’ works from illegal shadow libraries to avoid paying for those works, while at the same time uploading via torrenting unlawful copies of the same works, all in violation of Plaintiffs’ copyrights.

The case is similar to Carreyrou in approach–“joined individual actions pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 20”–but much larger, comprising 100 authors, authors’ estates, and publishers who either timely opted out or are seeking permission from the Bartz judge to opt out late.

Plaintiffs are seeking damages not just under the Copyright Act, but under 17 U.S.C. § 1203(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allows awards of up to $2,500 or up to $25,000, depending on the violation. They demand individual judgment on each of their claims, statutory damages “up to the maximum provided by law”, attorney fees and costs, a permanent injunction barring Anthropic and its agents from future infringement of “any of Plaintiffs’ exclusive rights under copyright”, and “[a]n order requiring that Defendants destroy under the Court’s supervision all infringing copies of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works in Defendants’ possession or control.”

Again, this kind of joint action is “unorthodox”, in the words of some of the news coverage of it, and it remains to be seen how the court will respond–especially since the number of plaintiffs is so large and they are each demanding a separate jury trial.

Keeping Track

There’s a tremendous volume of AI litigation right now. Keeping track of it is a monumental task.

The best resource I’ve found for that is Chat GPT is Eating the World. This extensive resource provides overviews and updates for every case that’s being litigated (128 of them as of this writing), news and articles, a master case calendar, and more, including a data center lawsuit tracker. It’s an essential resource for keeping up to date with an issue of vital importance not just for writers, but for…everyone. (Forgive its clunky formatting.)

The post Anthropic Settlement Update: The Opt-Outs Strike Back appeared first on Writer Beware.

I doubt that there will be anyone reading this article who hasn’t been targeted by a writing scam. That’s how prevalent and aggressive they are these days.

Fraudsters who prey on writers employ a variety of methods to recruit clients: advertising (especially on Facebook, which is awash in ads for scam publishing service providers), sponsored links on Google (plug “find a publisher” into Google, and the top results will be for scam or vanity publishers), social media activity (watch out for seemingly friendly DM contacts)–and, most often, direct solicitation via email and phone calls purporting to offer publishing or agenting or film adaptation services…and, increasingly, impersonating companies and professionals in those fields.

Real, reputable literary agents and publishers and film production people, by contrast, rarely reach out to writers directly. But while that’s true 99% of the time, you can’t say it never happens. And for writerly activities like conferences, or interview or lecture invites, direct contact is common. So how do you distinguish the rare genuine contact from a scam solicitation? Often, the first clue is the sender’s email address.

Here are some things to watch for. All examples are drawn from reports and complaints received by Writer Beware.

Gmail and Other Non-Professional Email Addresses

A publishing professional, a conference, a radio or TV show, or a professional organization will most likely be emailing from their own or their company’s web domain. It’s possible, of course, that a literary agent might dash off an email from their personal account. But if someone purporting to be a publishing professional emails you from a non-professional address–AOL, Protonmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and the like–it is a pretty strong caution sign.

Over the past year, also, the Gmail addresses almost universally used by the aggressive AI-driven marketing and impersonation scams from Nigeria have become a warning sign all by themselves.

Some examples of non-pro addresses where you’d normally expect a company email domain (especially common with impersonation scams):

• info.us.npr@gmail.com (impersonating NPR with fake interview offers)
• ifcfilmsproduction@gmail.com
• penamerica.event@gmail.com (impersonating the PEN America Literary Gala with fake invites)
• harpercollins.publishers@aol.com
• macmillan@gmail.com
• turininternationalbookfair@gmail.com
• therightsfactoryagency@proton.me (impersonating The Rights Factory literary agency)
• ballyscullionbookfest@gmail.com (impersonating the Ballyscullion Park Book Festival with fake invites)
• amazonstudios@gmail.com

The fraudsters running marketing, book club, review, “reading challenge”, and related scams often use two first names, or names that otherwise seem weird. Their Gmail addresses often include numbers (hard to believe there are 8 other Harper Lynn Collinses):

• Judy Chinatown <chinatowncommunityjudy@gmail.com>
• Michael A. Marvellous <michael.a.marvellous.book@gmail.com>
• Freya Gregory’s <freyagreegorys@gmail.com>
• Grace Norah <gracenorah273@gmail.com>
• Lynn Mandi <mandilynn621@gmail.com>
• Santa k.f. Seifeuuyy <santakfseifeuuyy@gmail.com>
• Harper Collinsworth <harpercollinsworthbookexpert@gmail.com>
• Harper Lynn Collins <harperlynncollins09@gmail.com>
• Beloved.Mercy.Co.Organizer PBC <mercybeloved9@gmail.com>

Also popular with book marketing scammers: addresses that include their supposed job title:

• judith.dmoderator@gmail.com
• joshua.bookgrowthpartnerships@gmail.com
• patricialaura.marketingspeci@gmail.com
• gracehannah.authorservices@gmail.com
• leatitia.wetsonlitagent@gmail.com
• Kierrabookpromotion006@gmail.com
• chloebennettbookmarketing@gmail.com
• dominichecarinofilmscout@gmail.com

Lookalike Email Domains

Impersonation fraudsters register email domains specifically to send out scam solicitations. The fake email addresses they choose are designed to look like real ones.

It’s important, therefore, to verify any out-of-the-blue publishing-, writing-, or movie rights-related email you receive, especially where you can’t tie it to a contact or submission you yourself made. The genuine email address may be findable on the official company website, or via references to it online; if not, try searching on company name + email format to see if there are results from sites like RocketReach and ContactOut, which keep track of business email formats. For example, here’s HarperCollins.

Another quick test: load the email domain to see if there’s a website associated with it. Often there will be nothing there–or you may find a placeholder like this one, which was created to impersonate an editor.

Notice also how many of the fake addresses below break up names or phrases with periods (jeff.weber, annejhawkins.literaryagent, etc.). That format is something I see a lot with impersonation scams.

• jeff.weber@thepenguinrandomhouse.com (real email: @penguinrandomhouse.com)
• ebassoff@us-wmeagency.com (real email: @wmeagency.com)
• lexie.smith@lionsgatefilmproduction.com (real email: @lionsgate.com)
• support@wgamembers.org (real email: @wga.org)
• corporate@barnesnobleinfo.com (real email: @barnesandnoble.com)
• bookssubmissions@hachettebookgroup.ink (real email: @hbgusa.com)
• dan.lazar@writershouseliterary.com (real email: @writershouse.com)
• annejhawkins.literaryagent@gmail.com (real email: @jhalit.com)
• megan.lynch@flatironbooks.com.co (real email: @flatironbooks.com)

Sneaky Switcheroos

Some especially sneaky scammers “borrow” the authentic email address, but insert one or two subtle switches: a number interpolated for a letter (Pengu1n), two letters reversed (HarpreCollins), an extra letter added or omitted (Hachett). This kind of subterfuge–famously used by manuscript thief Filippo Bernardini–is especially hard to spot.

This one adds an “s” where an “s” shouldn’t be (real domain: penguinrandomhouse.com):

Many eager authors might miss the extra “i” in “publishiing” (real domain: @skyhorsepublishing.com):

This one leaves out an “s” (the website at the real domain, parkesmacdonaldproductions.com, includes a warning).

Mismatches and Discrepancies

Everyone makes mistakes from time to time, but scammer emails often include telltale discrepancies or mismatches between email address and email content. Here, for example, the sender uses the name Nathan Lewis, but the email address belongs to Nathan Wellis or Nathan W. Ellis.

In this example, the sender’s From line (with the double “a” in Caarolyn) didn’t match their signature at the bottom (Carolyn with one “a”).

One name in the email address, another in the body of the email.

Same problem (my emphasis):

In this one, the sender’s email address in the “From” line doesn’t match the email address in their signature.

Just Plain Weirdness

Scam email addresses–especially for the editor impersonation scam that’s become so widespread over the past months–often feature awkward mashups of personal and company names. Beyond the fact that someone from Hachette or Trellis Literary Agency is unlikely to be using a Gmail or AOL address, they also won’t be combining the publisher’s name with their own, or tacking the publisher’s name onto a personal domain. (Here, as above, note the prevalence of periods.)

• shannonkelly.hachette.uk@aol.com
• carolinamancheno.harpercollins@aol.com
• caitlino.thebookgroup@gmail.com
• natalieedwardstrellisliterary@gmail.com
• aevitas.jenmarshall.literayagent@gmail.com (note the mis-spelling of “literary”)
• brendanbpenguinrandomhouse@gmail.com
• stmartins@vicki-lame.com (this domain and the one below resolve to identical placeholder webpages)
• sourcebooks@shana-dreh.com
• saraquery.megibowlitagent@gmail.com

Additional Email Scam-Spotting Tips

Wonky email addresses are just one of many potential scam signs. Others currently popular with publishing scammers include:

Non-typical salutations. Using myself as an example: Dear Victoria Strauss, rather than the more normal Dear Victoria or Dear Ms. Strauss. Ditto for Dear Author. Or no salutation at all. (First name/last name is the one I see most often.)

Extended and apparently accurate discussions of your book’s theme and plot points, coupled with effusive praise. A genuine contact won’t necessarily not include these–but both are established scam M.O.s, and should always prompt extra caution.

Emojis. When I first started getting reports of AI-driven marketing scams in the summer of last year, many of the emails were littered with emojis (you can see an example toward the end of this post). Marketing professionals communicate professionally, which means not writing emails that look like social media posts. I’m not seeing this so often nowadays, but it is still something to watch for, and a big caution sign.

Interminable email exchanges. AI-driven marketing scams, especially, employ a boiled-frog approach, where they ease you gently toward the actual money ask over the course of multiple, often lengthy emails, with each email re-emphasizing how great they think you are and how excellently they can help you. It’s classic emotional manipulation: the deeper you’re drawn into the interaction, the more invested you become, the more plausible the scammer’s promises start to seem, and the harder it will ultimately be (the scammer hopes) for you to say no.

Insistent nudging. Scammers want to close the deal as fast as possible, so if you don’t respond right away (especially to payment requests) they may repeatedly check back in with “just following up on my last email” or “wondering if you’ve had a chance to evaluate my offer” communications–sometimes within hours of when they last contacted you.

Fees where they aren’t normally charged.This is always a warning sign. For example, real book clubs, radio shows, and conferences don’t charge fees to invited guests.

Non-reversible payment methods. Instead of credit card transactions, scammers will often require payment by methods that are difficult or impossible to dispute or reverse: wire transfers, Upwork or Fiverr invoices, Paypal Friends and Family, apps like Zelle or CashApp.

Invoices that lack vital information like names, addresses, and phone numbers. Scammers want to avoid accountability. Never pay an invoice that doesn’t offer full disclosure of the provider, their business, and how to contact the person.

The post The First Clue to an Email Scam May Be the Address appeared first on Writer Beware.

In December 2024, the FBI arrested the CEO, VP, and an associate of PageTurner Press and Media, one of the most prolific and predatory of the many Philippine publishing scams. The government determined that over the course of six years, PageTurner–which did business in the Philippines under the name Innocentrix–defrauded nearly 900 writers of more than $48 million.

The gears of US justice grind slowly (especially these days), but in early May, PageTurner CEO Michael Cris Traya Sordilla pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one of money laundering. Although each count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, the government’s sentencing guidelines in Sordilla’s plea agreement suggest he will serve much less time.

The plea agreement also requires Sordilla to pay millions of dollars in restitution to his victims. Will anyone ever receive those payments, though? Today’s guest post by retired Professor of Economics Trent Bertrand takes a look at that question, using the PageTurner prosecution as a lens to examine how the prevalence of plea bargains in US criminal prosecutions often serves the needs of prosecutors and defense attorneys rather than the victims of all-too-common frauds. For Mr. Bertrand, the issue is not abstract, as you’ll see from his bio at the bottom of this post.

Can a Flawed US Legal System Discourage Fraud?

by Trent Bertrand

Scams have become so commonplace in the United States that the vast majority are never investigated or prosecuted. Though various administrations have highlighted the need to address widespread fraud, little attention has been given to a basic flaw in the US criminal legal system in either deterring fraud or bringing justice to its victims.

Most criminal prosecutions (some 96-98%) result in plea bargains rather than jury trials. It is not much of an exaggeration to suggest that the trial by jury criminal justice system has been replaced by a plea bargain system. The flaw in the system results from what the economics literature calls the ‘principal agent’ problem, where the incentives for the agents empowered to implement systems or policies do not align well with the principal goals of those systems or policies. The plea bargain system is better designed to meet the goals of the agents negotiating these pleas, i.e. the prosecutors and the defense attorneys, than it is in meeting the twin goals of deterring similar crimes and bringing justice to the victims.

The key feature of the system is a combination of sentencing guidelines that fall far short of the maximum sentences for the offenses being charged. This part of the plea bargain fully meets the needs of prosecutors to obtain guilty pleas without the risks and costs of trials, and for the defense attorneys to charge high fees for protecting their clients from the threat of those statutory maximum jail sentences. Plea bargains in fraud cases also include ‘orders for restitution’ for the victims, but with little incentive for the fraudsters to pay restitution, especially if the main culprits have laundered the money abroad and have returned to their home country.

In this article, I illustrate just how flawed the system is based on the likely outcome of the prosecution under way in San Diego of four defendants in the PageTurner Press and Media scam.

Arrests, a Guilty Plea, and a Problem of Enforcement

This scam took advantage of elderly authors anxious to get their works more widely recognized. The lead conspirator, Michael Cris Traya Sordilla, operated a call center from the Philippines to bilk some 800+ mainly senior authors of about $48 million with false claims about having their works published and marketed by reputable publishers or highlighted in films and telvision series.

Against the odds, three of the conspirators were arrested in San Diego in December of 2024, with a fourth indicted a year later, in December 2025. Three of them remain in custody.

On April 16, 2026, Sordilla signed a plea bargain arranged by the prosecutor Oleksandra Johnson and the Defense Attornery Antonio Yoon [USA vs.Michael Cris Traya Sordilla, Case No. 24CR2712-JLS, Plea Agreement, Filed May 6,2026, S.D. California]. The Sordilla plea bargain includes a recommended sentence based on the Federal guidelines for sentencing established for the two offenses, wire/mail fraud and money laundering. While the statutory maximum is 40 years in prison, the recommended sentence by the negotiating parties in the Sordilla plea is 33 months in prison. The actual sentence is at the sole discretion of the presiding judge but the record shows that the judges often reduce rather than enhance the recommended sentence.

Sordilla has been in custody since he was arrested in December of 2024. If, as is customary, he is given credit for time already served, he may have at most a few months more in jail if the plea bargain sentencing recommendations are accepted by the judge.

The government also confiscated over 6 million dollars held by the firms set up by the defendants as part of their scam. Sordilla ordered his coconspirators to launder some $42 million for deposit in bank accounts in the Philippines and, as part of the plea agreement will pay the $2.7 million that he claimed to have personally received as a fine.

What is in this plea bargain for the victims? Sordilla also agreed to an order of restitution of some $48.7 million equal to the amount known to have been fraudulently extracted from the victims. This may turn out to be just another gift to lawyers who may be hired by victims to try without much prospect of success to enforce the order of restitution with both the money and the culprits already outside the United States. The result of the plea bargain could well be a get out of jail card for a main conspirator soon to be living back in the Philippines with access to the bulk of the $42 million laundered abroad.

The DOJ’s announcement of the plea bargain [US Attorney’s Office, S.D. California, “Defendant Pleads Guilty in $48 Million Nationwide Book Publishing Scam Targeting Hundreds of Seniors”, May 7, 2026} puts a rosy spin on the outcome. US Attorney Adam Gordon is quoted as saying “The defendants didn’t just steal money- they stole dreams leaving victims with empty promises and devastating losses. Today’s guilty plea delivers justice for the victims…”. Special Agent in Charge Mark Remily of the FBI San Diego Field Office is quoted as saying “Today’s guilty plea is the beginning of holding all those involved in this Hollywood dream scheme accountable for their crimes. FBI San Diego, along with our law enforcement partners, remains steadfast in our pursuit of justice of any scammers attempting to steal Americans’ hard-earned money.” Would that it were true! A jail term of three years in prison and unenforceable order of restitution is a poor excuse for justice.

What Might Better Serve PageTurner (and Other) Fraud Victims?

Is there hope that common sense justice might be salvaged from this flawed system?

As with all federal plea bargains, the judge has the final say on sentencing and the defendant does not have a right to change his guilty plea. A solution would be to sentence the defendant to a significantly longer jail sentence, with parole or supervised release in line with the present guidelines contingent on meeting reasonable levels of restitution. There is scope for doing this under the present system, but the fly in the ointment is the short sentences prescribed under the guidelines. If Sordilla is facing just a few more months in prison, there is little incentive for him to scramble to fund the restitution fund in order to gain parole a few months ahead of his scheduled release.

The judge could set aside the plea agreement sentencing recommendation and impose a much longer sentence. In the PageTurner case, Sordilla is obligated under an addendum to the plea agreement to disclose all assets he owns or has transferred to other parties since the commencement of the scam. He is reportedly a very wealthy businessman in the Philippines, owner of several enterprises and well known for his philanthropic activities. A good starting point for putting common sense back into the system would be a lengthy sentence, say 30 years instead of the statutory maximum of 40 years, with parole provided in line with the present sentencing guidelines conditional on payment of a substantial restitution, perhaps $30 million rather than the unenforceable $48.7 million he agreed to in the plea bargain.

Such a sentence would provide the missing incentive for Sordilla to come up with the restitution funds, even if this implied the same sort of ‘devastating losses’ he imposed on his victims. This decision might be appealed by Sordilla, since the plea bargain gives Sordilla the right to appeal a sentence far out of line with the sentencing guidelines or to claim ineffective counsel, the two exceptions to the ‘no appeal’ rule included in the plea agreement. But appeals can fail, and such an action by the judge could bring justice to the victims.

Relying on a courageous judge to use his or her power over sentencing to create a significant incentive for the culprit to provide restitution funds may be wishful thinking. As emphasized in this analysis, the plea bargain system is designed to meet the needs of agents often more interested in racking up a conviction while minimizing demands on prosecutorial, court and prison resources than in providing justice to the victims. If justice is to be had in the PageTurner scam, the judge would have to craft the needed tools on his or her own and deviate from the Federal sentencing guidelines, albeit for a good reason. That is why the legal system for addressing fraud is inherently flawed. Unless the present system of sentencing guidelines is reformed to provide parole or supervised release only after the order of restitution is satisfied, the present legal system will continue to fail to provide deterrence to fraud or justice for its victims.

The lack of incentives for funding restitution by the guilty fraudsters is not the only flaw in the system. The legal literature also highlights the use of the system to entice innocent parties to plead guilty with greatly reduced sentences via plea bargains rather than to face the possibility of much harsher penalties at trial [Carissa Byrne Hessick’s book, Punishment Without Trial: Why Plea Bargaining is a Bad Deal provides an example]. This has some similar characteristics to the flaw analyzed in this article, in that this racks up recorded convictions for prosecutors and successful mitigation of potentially harsher sentences by defense attorneys without deterring crime or bringing justice to the victims.

What would a sensible reform of the dominant plea bargain justice system for fraud look like if incentives with the goals of a commonsense justice system were not so misaligned? A starting point would be to recognize the dominance of plea bargains and specifically define the sentencing guidelines as a recommendation for parole or supervised release conditional on meeting all the conditions of the plea bargain, including satisfaction of the order of restitution. Such an outcome would not be an outlier based on a single judge refusing to see deterrence of crime and justice for victims swept aside. The revised Federal Guidelines would instead create a strong incentive for the those admitting guilt to make restitution to their victims for their crimes.

Trent Bertrand is a retired Professor of Economics who has taught at the Johns Hopkins University, Cornell University, Queen’s University, McGill University, the State University of New York at Binghamton, Princeton University, Vanderbilt University, the University of Hawaii as well as participating in University Development Programs at Thammasat University in Thailand with Ford and Rockefeller Foundation support. A close friend and colleague of his at the SUNY Binghamton Department of Economics passed away with a broken spirit due to a belated realization that he had fallen victim to the PageTurner fraudsters.

The post Guest Blog Post: Can a Flawed US Legal System Discourage Fraud? A Look at the PageTurner Scam Prosecution appeared first on Writer Beware.

Recent developments in the world of copyright have been making many writers rethink their attitudes toward copyright registration and reversion of publishing rights.

Because many artificial intelligence companies used pirated books to train their large language models, there are now a growing number of copyright infringement class action lawsuits against them. While it is still undetermined whether these companies’ use of the copyrighted material was fair use or not, it has become clear that the use of copyrighted material from pirate libraries is a no-no, especially when the method involves torrenting, which means the companies participated in redistributing the materials.

The first of these lawsuits, Anthropic v. Bartz, just held the final Fairness Hearing on a class action settlement and, although there were some minor factors which delayed Judge Martinez-Olguin’s approval, it looks as if the class action settlement will be approved and 1.5 billion dollars will eventually be paid out to claimants who met the definition of the class.

Needless to say, this will be an unprecedented class action settlement involving copyright. As currently calculated, claimants for each copyrighted work that was pirated by Anthropic will share $3,100. If the work was self-published or the work’s rights had reverted to the author, they will receive the entire amount. It’s safe to say this is the first time the average writer will benefit from their copyright registration in any substantial way.

But not every writer benefited, for a number of reasons; the primary reason was that the book had to have had its copyright registered with the US Copyright Office. The definition of the class for the Anthropic class action was:

• have been downloaded by Anthropic from LibGen or PiLiMi;
• have an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) or Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN);
• have been registered with the United States Copyright Office within five years of the work’s first publication; and
• have been registered before being downloaded by Anthropic, or within three months of the work’s first publication.

Of the estimated seven million works that were pirated by Anthropic, less than 500,000 works were part of the class. As of the May 14 settlement hearing, the number of works claimed was 447,576. That’s about 7% of the pirated works.

The requirement that a work have an ISBN or ASIN is essentially unfair because it only recognizes individual books, but at least it doesn’t discriminate against self-published works. There is nothing in US Copyright Law that distinguishes between “books” and other literary works that may have a registered copyright. The requirement is only to make identifying works and verifying author and publisher easier for the settlement administrators. As I say, though, most books do have one or the other, even if the ASIN is connected to long out of print book being sold used. Presumably some book authors have managed to avoid Amazon entirely, but they must be a small number.

Another similar class action lawsuit, Elsevier Inc. v. Meta Platforms, Inc. was filed on May 5 by a bunch of publishers and Scott Turow as the only named author. It restricts the class even further. The proposed class definition is:

All legal or beneficial owners of registered copyrights, in whole or in part, for any book possessing an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) or journal article possessing a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) or International Standard Serial Number (ISSN), that Meta, without such owner’s authorization, (1) reproduced by downloading during torrenting and/or copying of web scrapes; or (2) distributed during torrenting; or (3) reproduced in connection with the development and/or training of a Llama Model. For purposes of this definition, copyrighted works are limited to those registered with the United States Copyright Office (a) within five years of the work’s publication and before being reproduced or distributed by Meta, or (b) within three months of publication.

The main difference from the Anthropic class is the limitation to only books that have ISBNs. ASINs don’t count, cutting out a large majority of self and indie published works, even if they do have registered copyrights. You can understand, I suppose, why the plaintiff publishers want the class restricted to the books that they published, but it’s even more grossly unfair to ebooks that were published without ISBNs because ISBNs are only important for physical book distribution. It’s hard to justify limiting a class action this way when, for all practical purposes, the fairer Anthropic settlement’s class definition worked (fingers crossed).

So will there now be a rush by indie authors to purchase ISBNs? It makes sense if, for example, you claimed a book without an ISBN in the Anthropic settlement, since there’s a good chance it will turn up again in the Turow class. Like with copyright registration and rights reversion, the effort and outlay start to look worthwhile. Large copyright class actions and settlements change everything.

Postscript. The fundamental problem is that there is no comprehensive registry for published works.

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