Raymond Love just wanted to publish his children’s book with a trustworthy self-publishing company. Instead, he found a scam that took his money and delivered nothing of value.

For most authors in this situation, lost cash and lost dreams are unrecoverable, but Raymond Love’s story has a different ending. He sued–and won.

The legal documents in his case provide fascinating insight not just into the techniques scammers use to bleed their victims of resources–manipulating them with constant and egregious lies into believing that services are being delivered and promises fulfilled–but also the complex web of shell companies and shady operators that keep the scam humming.

The Scam: Wiley Book Writers

In January 2023, Canadian citizen Raymond Love responded to an online ad from a purported Illinois-based company called Wiley Book Writers (WBW), engaging them to provide publishing services and paying $3,200 for a “premium publication package” (WBW’s website is gone but you can see an archived version courtesy of the Wayback Machine). The invoice he received carried the name of a different company, but all seemed on the up and up; there were even assurances on WBW’s About page that it was affiliated with John Wiley & Sons in New York City, a major publisher of academic and scientific books.

In reality, WBW was part of a large group of scams with extensive connections to South Asia, particularly Pakistan. These pose online as publishing, marketing, and distribution service providers, but are really pig butchering schemes, designed to drain their clients of resources through the sale of services and products that may be substandard, fraudulent, or never delivered at all. As part of a smokescreen of fake verisimilitude, they often “borrow” the names of reputable publishers and organizations.

(I’ve written several posts about these scams. Here’s the main one, which describes how they operate and the consequences of using them. I call them ghostwriting scams because in contrast to other foreign scams that target English-speaking writers, virtually all of them sell ghostwriting or book writing services).

Having snagged its client, WBW embarked upon the process of fleecing him. A few months after purchasing the publishing package, WBW offered Mr. Love a “book distribution agreement” that proposed to “distribute 2,000 copies of the Book to Harper Collins [sic] Publishing for sale in the United States of America” (see Exhibit 1 of Mr. Love’s complaint). Not for free, of course–Mr. Love would have to pay a “consolidated sum of $10,000”–but the promised return was more than double, with guaranteed royalties of $24,980.

Book order or book distribution scams are a frequent offering from fraudsters like WBW (here’s another example). Unlike the publishing packages, which are overpriced and often of poor quality but often (though not always) are actually delivered, they are pure fraud: there are no books, there is no distribution, and the big return is a lie to incentivize purchase. The client who pays signals their willingness to hand over large sums of cash, incentivizing the scammers to come back for more.

Mr. Love did pay the $10,000, which was invoiced from a third company name. Two more fraudulent distribution agreements followed, totaling $15,500. More “opportunities” materialized: $1,000 for bogus “copyright proof”; $1,200 for a “showcase” at a fake book fair; $2,160 for fake insurance to “protect you from lawsuits and financial losses”; miscellenous promotional and other offerings, such as a billboard in Times Square; and $10,495 for additional book printing connected to the mythical HarperCollins offer (a fake letter from Harper is exhibit 2 of the complaint), paid to yet another company name.

In October, when royalties from the first book order scam were supposed to arrive, Mr. Love began to ask WBW representatives how to track sales and payments. They responded with excuses and false promises: don’t worry, payment coming soon! He continued to make requests as January, the supposed date of the next royalty disbursement, came and went; WBW continued to fob him off. When he became fed up enough to threaten legal action, they attempted to pacify him by wiring $3,000, promising to pay a similar amount every two weeks.

That too was a lie. The $3,000, plus 50 hardcover copies of his book, were all Mr. Love ever received for his investment of nearly $50,000.

Lost in a Forest of Names

Mr. Love engaged one company to publish his book, paid invoices to three others, and as of this writing, his book remains on sale with yet another company listed as the publisher. He dealt with at least three sales reps, all of whom went by American-sounding names but were likely foreign nationals using aliases. This proliferation of monikers is a typical feature of ghostwriting scams, which use multiple fronts to recruit clients (here’s one especially egregious example) and funnel payments through webs of related businessses.

The three businesses that took payment–Techture, Inc., CodexLab, Inc., and Vox Studios, LLC–are all under common control, according to Mr. Love’s lawsuit:

Additional defendants are Muhammad Khan, the registered agent for Techture (which in addition to having an F rating at the BBB was sued in 2023 by Amazon thanks to its misuse of Amazon trademarks); and Salman Ali Khan, the “managing member” of Vox Studios (which currently runs at least two other ghostscams, Publishing Bridge and 48 Hours Publisher).

It’s probable there are even more that Mr. Love’s lawyers weren’t able to unmask:

Not named as a defendant, but almost certainly a dba of one of the companies named above, is Gnome Book Writing, the current publisher for Mr. Love’s book. Gnome also has an F rating at the BBB. It claims a New York City address, but per the transparency information on its Instagram account, that’s not quite accurate:

The Lawsuit

In April of 2025, Mr. Love filed suit against WBW and associated business names and business owners in District Court in Illinois. The complaint alleged a RICO conspiracy as well as fraud, consumer fraud, and violations of the Lanham Act, and demanded a variety of relief, including removing Mr. Love’s book from sale, compensatory damages including all payments made by Mr. Love, punitive damages, and attorneys’ fees and costs.

Mr. Love’s lawyers were able to successfully serve Onzila Lodhi, Salman Ali Khan, CodexLab, and Vox Studios, all of whom (somewhat to the lawyers’ surprise) responded to the complaint. After some legal maneuvering, including a motion to dismiss by Lodhi and a potential cross-claim against Lodhi by Ali Salman Kahn, the parties arrived in February 2026 at a settlement, with the defendants agreeing to pay a lump sum to Mr. Love by April 30 and accept judgment in the case if payment wasn’t made by that date.

It wasn’t. On August 26, judgment against all four defendants was entered in the amount of $75,000.

As for the other two defendants, Techture and Muhammad Khan, they did not respond to the complaint despite several attempts at service, and in August 2026 the court granted Mr. Love the entire amount of his requested default judgment against them–an extra-hefty sum thanks to the RICO charge:

Difficult But Not Impossible

Most victims of ghostscams and other publishing frauds don’t have the resources or the resolve to take legal action against their defrauders. It’s difficult and expensive–not just financially, but emotionally–especially with scams like WBW, which have foreign connections and opaque business structures and require intensive research to trace them even a little way toward their source. Still, this case shows it can be done.

The challenge, of course, will be collecting on the judgements. So in that sense, the win may be limited. It is a win, though, in that the fraud was recognized by the court. Also, the lawsuit is public record, and turns up on a websearch on any of the defendants.

Often the reaction to the stories of scam victims–especially where the scam is as egregious as WBW’s–is to marvel at how anyone could be dumb enough to fall for something so transparently bogus. The thing is, though, it’s only transparent if you have some prior knowledge and context. Many people who write books don’t have that, because they aren’t looking to make a career: just to publish a story for their kids, or a memoir, or a spiritual testimony. They don’t know–in fact, don’t realize that they need to know–that fraud is rampant in the self-publishing space, that they shouldn’t respond to ads on Facebook or sponsored links on Google, that it’s unwise to accept the claims of online publishing services at face value.

Caveat emptor and all that–but it doesn’t mean they deserve to be ripped off.

Resources

How to avoid scams in the self-publishing space? As with everything related to publishing, it’s important to invest in some knowledge acquisition before jumping in.

The Alliance of Independent Authors is a global professional advocacy group for self-publishers. Its Self-Publishing Advice blog covers subjects of interest to self-publishers, its Watchdog Desk provides scam warnings and other cautions, and it maintains a very useful directory of vetted service providers.

Writer Beware maintains a resource on self-publishing on our website (as distinct from this blog), including a general overview, various warnings and cautions, and links to trustworthy resources.

Ghostscams are everywhere online. They advertise extensively and aggressively–Facebook is a major offender–and pose a major risk for would-be self-publishers. My article on ghostscams can help you recognize them: it covers how they work, the markers that identify them, and the potentially very bad consequences of using them.

The other major scam from overseas targeting English-speaking writers: publishing/marketing scams from the Philippines. These differ from ghostscams in significant ways, including relying on direct solicitation rather than advertising, and poaching already-published writers from their publishers rather than recruiting first-timers, They are also big into impersonation. I’ve been keeping a public list of them since 2018.

The post Love v. Wiley Book Writers: A Publishing Scam Gets a Rare Comeuppance appeared first on Writer Beware.

In the wake of the widespread errors that have marred the claims process, the deadline to dispute a claim and provide documentation has been extended from 30 days to 60 days (from the day class members received their allocation notice).

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

The one on the right invites authors to review and confirm their claims: just making sure all is as it should be. If you received the one on the left, however, all is not as it should be: there’s some conflict between rightsholders’ claims that needs to be resolved.

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

(UPDATE: I originally said that notices were only going out if there were claims disagreements. I was mistaken. The section above has been edited to correct that.)

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 100% claims on in-print books, in some cases that may reflect the publisher’s ownership of copyright. Where the author holds copyright, 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 the settlement administrators were aware of the issue and were 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 or metadata is responsible for the errors. Or maybe it’s an artifact of batch claims by publishers? I don’t know.

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

• 50% or 100% claims on rights-reverted works: Albert Whitman (!!! AW is in bankruptcy proceedings), Ace Books, Angry Robot, Astra Publishing House, Baen, Ballantine, Bloomsbury, Desktop Broadcasting Inc., Globe Pequot, Harlequin, Hachette (including for Grand Central), HarperCollins (including for Houghton Mifflin/Harcourt), J. Boylston (successor to Byron Preiss’s ibooks), Kensington, Little Brown, Llewellyn, Macmillan (including for Tor, St. Martin’s Press, and Feiwel & Friends), North Star Editions, Orbit US, Penguin Random House, Red Hen Press, Silhouette, Simon & Schuster, Siren Bookstrand, Sourcebooks, Tekno, Titan Publishing, Warner Books.
• 100% claims on in-print works: Abington Press, Abrams, American Library Association, Bolinda Audio, Chronicle Books, Coffee House Press, Columbia University Press, Feminist Press, Georgetown University Press, Inkshares, Johns Hopkins University Press, Kensington, McFarland, Melville House, New Harbinger, Overline Capital LLC, Page Street Publishers, Red Wheel/Weiser, Rutgers University Press, Scholastic, University of Washington Press, West Virginia University Press, Wizards of the Coast.(Odd how many university presses are in this category.)

UPDATE 9/5/26: The Authors Guild is noting that “certain publishers have informed the settlement administrator that they mistakenly selected a 100 percent allocation rather than the default option. The administrator is updating those publishers’ allocation percentages accordingly.”

The AG also suggests why some authors with rights reversions may be seeing a publisher claim (my emphasis):

The Authors Guild’s position is that an author whose rights reverted before August 10, 2022 (the “download” date in the settlement), should be entitled to 100 percent of the funds for the title, depending on the contract….Note that if rights in an author’s work reverted after August 10, 2022, the publisher may have a valid claim (assuming it was the legal owner of the rights at the time infringement occurred), and as such the author (and any co-author) may be entitled to only 50 percent of the award.

It would have been nice for this to be made clear at the start of the claims filing process, rather than now, so long after the fact.

UPDATE 9/8/26: Per several reports on social media and to me via email, HarperCollins/Harlequin has corrected the claims on rights-reverted books. Kensington is doing the same.

I also heard from George Sandison of Titan Books, who says:

I can see that Titan is listed on your site as one of the publishers who may have claimed for titles where the rights have reverted. This certainly isn’t anything I intended to do, and as part of our bulk claim we aimed to strip out a wide range of titles for a lot of reasons – including the rights having reverted to authors….

If we have made any errors in our bulk claim I’d really like to get them addressed, but knowing where they are is half the battle.

UPDATE 9/10/26: Writers with 100% claims on in-print books are receiving this email from the settlement admins:

Dear Class Member:

You are receiving this email because at least one of your works was claimed by a publisher at 100%. Certain publishers have informed us that they intended to claim the default option and we are updating the claim selection accordingly. Your combined claim form will be updated to reflect their updated selection and will no longer show 100% for the publisher. You may log in again next week to confirm the updated allocation. If all other rightsholders originally selected the default, the Work will no longer be in disagreement.

Thank you for your patience, and feel free to reach out to us or to Class Counsel with questions.

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.

UPDATE: I am honestly surprised how many authors are reporting claims by agencies. Here’s what’s been reported so far, in alphabetical order by first letter (again, I’m updating as reports come in). Writers, if you’re with any of these agencies, check your claim (note that at least some of this may be the same kinds of errors that are afflicting publisher claims).

Dystel Goderich & Bourret, Elaine Markson Literary Agency, Global Lion Intellectual Property (formerly PMA Literary), Harold Ober, JdeS and Associates, Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, Jeanne Fredericks Literary Agency, Joelle Delbourgo and Associates, L. Perkins Agency, Malatesta Literary Agency, Sanford J. Greenburger, Seymour Agency, Waterside Productions, Wylie Agency.

Important to note: as with the incorrect publisher claims, it’s entirely possible that some of the agent claims are also mistakes. Here’s what one agent, whose authors found that the agency was a claimant, told me: “I can’t speak for others but on many of my authors’ statements the publisher lists [the agency] as the recipient, this is not because I signed up for anything but is probably due to publishers pulling the payee info from the agency clause in the agreements which generally does send all income to the agent on the author’s behalf. It also shows that some of the publishers may fundamentally not understand that the settlement is for authors and agents aren’t included. Publishes are treating this money as though it’s some kind of license.”

UPDATE 9/8/26: It’s increasingly clear that many of the apparent claims by agents are errors. I’ve heard from authors with Elaine Markson Literary Agency and Joelle Delbourgo and Associates who confirmed with the agencies that they did not intend to make a claim. In an email to clients, Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency has also confirmed that the claims are errors. And I heard from Michael Bourret of Dystel Goderich & Bourret, who says:

[W]e were rather shocked to see our name on a list of agents who had submitted claims for our authors’ work. We have not submitted any such claim, and we’re not commissioning our clients’ settlement payments. 

We’ve received no notifications from the settlement administrator and have no claim numbers, so there’s no way for us to even see if claims have been made in our name. We also haven’t had any clients reach out to us about this issue.

It’s possible that a publisher somehow incorrectly listed us as a claimant, but we want to make clear…that we have not made any claims directly and will work with authors to make sure any mistakes are corrected.

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.

UPDATE 9/5/26: The Authors Guild has guidance for authors with educational works. The Textbook & Academic Authors Association also offers guidance.

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
• An author with multiple titles claimed 100% by an individual they never heard of who appears to be a scammer
• 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?

The notices include a link to the portal to either confirm your claim or make corrections. 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.

If your notice indicates a disagreement:

• Accessing the portal will bring you to a Disagreements page. You’ll see a list of your titles, with Expand buttons to see the claimants on each.
• 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.
• 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 or agent is making a wrongful claim, contact them to ask about it. For publishers, I’m guessing that many will respond that it’s a mistake, especially with the 100% claims on in-print books where authors own the copyrights. It can’t hurt to get that in writing.

If your notice doesn’t mention disagreements:

• Accessing the portal will bring you to a No Disagreements page with a list of your titles. Use the Expand buttons to double check the claims.
• Very important: Don’t assume, just because the page says No Disagreements, that everything is all good! Upon checking, you may discover claims you didn’t know about with which you definitely disagree. (I did.)
• If you want to make corrections, click the Update Allocation button at the bottom of the page. This takes you to a Disagreements page, where you can make corrections.

UPDATE 9/17/26: I’ve gotten several questions from non-US authors about how to handle tax information on the allocation form. Here’s guidance, sent out today from the settlement administrator:

What happens when you make corrections? I’d assume it generates another set of disagreement notices, but that’s just a guess. Any disagreements that can’t be resolved will go to the court-appointed Special Master, whose decision is final.

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.

UPDATE 9/5/26: The NY Times weighs in, with an article that doesn’t really reveal anything new.

The Authors Guild has a detailed article addressing how to navigate the claims portal and some of the issues described above, including righs reversion and educational works. Of note:

Please note that certain publishers have informed the settlement administrator that they mistakenly selected a 100 percent allocation rather than the default option. The administrator is updating those publishers’ allocation percentages accordingly. Authors who are concerned that their publisher seems to have mistakenly selected a 100 percent allocation instead of a default 50-50 split should log in again next week to see if the issue has been corrected. Those changes may resolve any apparent disagreements as to this issue.

They also address a possible reason some authors with rights reversions may be seeing a publisher claim anyway (my emphasis):

The Authors Guild’s position is that an author whose rights reverted before August 10, 2022 (the “download” date in the settlement), should be entitled to 100 percent of the funds for the title, depending on the contract….Note that if rights in an author’s work reverted after August 10, 2022, the publisher may have a valid claim (assuming it was the legal owner of the rights at the time infringement occurred), and as such the author (and any co-author) may be entitled to only 50 percent of the award.

UPDATE 9/6/26: The vultures are circling. Authors are reporting receiving emails like this one:

If you click the link in the email, it defaults to the website of VL Capital Management, a company that “provides immediate liquidity to creditors of distressed platforms”–i.e., buys up claims in bankruptcy and other situations, offering a lump sum that’s less than what’s due but has the attraction of being available right now, rather than in the future.

This may be predatory, but it’s not illegal (assuming that VL Capital isn’t just a scam front). However, I imagine Judge Martinez-Olguin might have something to say about such offers. And they really aren’t applicable to the Anthropic settlement, where payout is probably only weeks or months away and the offer of “up to” $1500 per book doesn’t really improve on what many authors will collect anyway.

Opportunists gonna opportune, I guess. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more groups out there.

UPDATE 9/15/26: The Authors Guild has updated its comprehensive guidance on the settlement with info about publisher corrections, as well as dedicated publisher email addresses for contact about corrections.

The post Anthropic Copyright Settlement: Publishers Are Making Incorrect Claims on Authors’ Payouts appeared first on Writer Beware.

When I first began reporting on the aggressive AI-driven email scams that have been plaguing the Inboxes of authors everywhere for well over a year now, they were limited to marketing scams offering supposedly expert “visibility” for writers and their books.

In the year-plus since then, the scams have adapted and expanded in response to writers’ reactions and increasingly widespread reporting and discussion. In addition to marketing offers, they now include book club and review scams and a wide variety of impersonation scams, where the goal of initial contact is to steer writers through one or more referrals into paid editing or marketing arrangements. They’ve impersonated well-known writers, literary agents, editors at publishing houses, book festivals (with fake invites), and radio stations and hosts (with fake interview requests).

The one thing the scammers haven’t changed or adapted is the set of markers that have characterized the scams from the start: hyper-personalization coupled with lavish praise (thanks to generative AI) that makes it seem the sender has actual knowledge of the writer’s book; the almost universal use of Gmail addresses; banking/payment information that traces to scammers overseas; and extreme aggressiveness that paradoxically undercuts effectiveness (when you’re getting multiple flattering yet suspiciously similar solicitations every day, they start to seen a tad inauthentic). It’s a business built on volume, so only a small fraction of writers need to be fooled in order for the fraudsters to make money.

I’ve been trying to keep track of this scam wave, which is the most prolific and aggressive I’ve ever chronicled. Here, for example, is my list of frequently-impersonated companies and individuals, which I’m adding to daily, sometimes multiple times a day (not exaggerating here). And you can see all of my posts about the scams here.

All of this to say…sorry, I’ve got more for you.

Production Companies

While an earlier wave of foreign impersonation scams heavily focused on filmmakers and production companies, usually with the goal of tricking writers into paying big bucks for screenplays and other “book to screen” services that might or might not arrive and wouldn’t get them any closer to a movie deal even if they did, the current tsunami of AI-driven scams has exclusively–as far as I can tell–targeted books, publishing, and areas surrounding them (such as author interview shows).

Till now, that is. In recent weeks I’ve started getting reports of production company impersonations that bear the AI scams’ distinctive markers, including hyper-personalization and praise and the ubiquitous Gmail addresses.

Note the way the address is formulated in the example above: sendername dot company name @ gmail.com. That’s very characteristic of impersonation scams (I’ve written a whole post about that and other scammer email tells).

The earlier production company impersonation scams are still active, so you could be targeted now on two fronts. The most important things to remember are that a) a production company reaching out to you directly is one of the least likely things ever to happen to you as a writer, and b) in the incredibly rare event that it does, the email will come from a company domain, not a Gmail or other non-professional address.

Literary Agent Impersonation Scams

This wouldn’t be the first time AI scammers have impersonated literary agents, but this new one I’m seeing is a bit different.

Basically, it’s a variation on the editor impersonation scam that is absolutely everywhere right now, except it’s a two step scam (fake agent to scam “editor”) rather than a three step scam (fake publishing house editor to fake agent to scam “editor”) and the emails tend to be less flowery and over-the-top. A literary agent (who, if you google them, is confirmably real) emails you out of the blue. As with the editor impersonation scam, they’re impressed with your work and want to know if you’re currently represented by a literary agent. Or they simply claim to want to know about you and what you’re working on. If you respond, the impersonator asks you to submit your query letter and manuscript, and after an improbably short period of just a few days, refers you to an “editor” who can fix whatever is wrong with your query letter or manuscript–for, of course, a sizeable fee. The scammer inhabits both personas.

I’ve seen emails identical to the one above purportedly from Andrea Brown and Julia Churchill at AM Heath.

This one skips the flattery, but also features the type of wonky Gmail address formulation you often see with these solicitations, where the name of the impersonated person is mashed together with their agency or publishing house.

Congratulations, Non-English-Speaking Writers, It’s Your Turn

All of the foreign scams I’m tracking–publishing and marketing scams from the Philippines, ghostwriting scams from South Asia (which pose online as self-publishing service providers), and the current wave of AI-driven scams that I’ve repeatedly traced to Nigeria and Nigerian individuals–have exclusively focused their efforts on English-speaking writers in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and wherever else they can be found. The solicitations, the websites, and the advertising are all in English–as are the phone calls (though the callers typically have heavy accents).

That may be changing.

Just in the last couple of weeks, I’ve gotten several reports of marketing solicitations in German. Despite the language switch-up, they are clearly examples of the AI scam wave–Gmail addresses, personalization and praise, marketers who can’t be found online–and target authors in exactly the same way.

This one, whose Gmail address doesn’t quite match the name in the signature (Erikson vs. Erykson; such discrepancies are a common scam marker) is purportedly from a marketing expert who specializes in “Amazon visibility, Goodreads presence, and organic discoverability”–all offerings that will be very familiar to anyone who has been targeted by a Gmail marketing scam.

Note also the next to last paragraph, which invites the receipient to respond to a series of questions: “How do you find your readers? Do they primarily come through your work at the <redacted>, or do they discover you independently?” This kind of friendly, open-ended inquiry is a common ingredient of AI marketing solicitations: it’s intended to incentivize response, so that the scammer can draw the writer in over an often-lengthy series of email exchanges designed to make it harder to say “no” when the money ask finally arrives.

This one is also a highly personalized marketing pitch, with the scammer (whose “team” has zero web presence) claiming to “increase the visibility of [authors’] books by introducing them to relevant readership groups, book clubs, and thematically appropriate audiences.” It too closes with an invitation to respond, but makes it super-easy: “If this opportunity aligns with your current goals as an author, simply reply with “Interested.” We will then send you further information about the campaign and the next steps.”

Additional AI-Driven Email Scam-Spotting Tips

As AI-driven scams continue to change and evolve, writers need to be ever more on their guard. We live now in a world where all writers are fair game, and any out-of-the-blue email or phone call related to your creative work has to be suspect, at least until you can determine that it’s not.

In addition to the specific warnings above and in my other posts, watch out for these:

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. As noted above, 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 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. The process of rights acquiition–such as optioning your movie rights–should never involve a fee or purchase requirement.

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 Production Companies, Literary Agents, Foreign Languages: AI-Driven Scams Continue to Morph appeared first on Writer Beware.

In the early days of Writer Beware–back in the pre-digital era–scammers waited for writers to come to them.

Sure, they advertised (Writer’s Digest used to have a Classified section that was full of scam ads; one notorious scam agency placed ads in their local Pennysaver). They had websites. And thanks to often lax oversight, they sometimes wound up in reputable market guides (cough *Literary Market Place* cough). But generally speaking, if you were scammed it was because you approached the scammer, not the other way around. (I don’t mean to suggest that being scammed was the writers’ fault; it was just the way things worked at the time.)

That’s no longer the case. Starting in the mid-twentyteens with the first wave of scams from overseas, direct solicitation became one of scammers’ main victim-recruiting techniques (the other: ads on Facebook). And increasingly, these solicitations involved impersonation–of literary agents, publishers, editors, film production companies, and more–to grab writers’ attention and trick them into parting with large amounts of cash.

I wrote my first post about impersonation scams in early 2020. Today, they’re so common that there’s a whole category devoted to them on this blog. If you write, no matter what your genre is or how you publish, you’ve probably been targeted.

That’s why I’m sure that today’s guest post from author Denise Beck-Clark will resonate with you. Denise details her own recent experience with an impersonation scammer, highlighting how elaborate such frauds have become thanks to scammers’ adoption of generative AI, and the vulnerabilities that make writers susceptible to them. She also points out that the authors the scammers seek to defraud are not the only victims. (You may remember Denise from her post last year about a different, somewhat less complicated impersonation scam.)

A Narrow Escape

by

Denise Beck-Clark

It’s called an “Imposter Scam” and it’s become quite popular these days, according to Victoria Strauss who monitors scams against writers in her excellent website, “Writer Beware.”

I’m not exaggerating when I say I have the occasion several times a week to be taken in by a scam. I want to call it a writer’s scam but that makes it sound like it’s the writer perpetuating the scam while the truth is it’s the writer who is being scammed.

Thanks to self-publishing my most recent novel, I am bombarded with phone calls, emails, and texts from people claiming to be from companies who either want to sell my book to a “traditional” publisher as they call them, or to promote my book.

After I lost a few thousand dollars almost two years ago, I’ve been cautious. But the scams are growing ever more sophisticated, viz., the one that almost just happened to me.

It started a couple of weeks ago with an email from one “Anna Michels” from a company called “BestSolution Publishing.” Interestingly, I rescued it from my Spam folder.

The email was quite literate and at the end of it was a picture of a pretty, young white woman wearing a big hat with address, phone number and email address that all looked perfectly realistic. Except for one thing: to my knowledge most young people these days don’t use AOL as their email provider, but she did.

As did “Eric Simonoff”, the literary agent “Anna” recommended to me. Their names are in quotes because that is the heart of the Imposter scam: people use the names of real people in the publishing industry, trying to get the writer to believe they’re being contacted by people who want nothing more than to help their self-published book become a New York Times bestseller.

Thus, “Anna’s” first email to me was all about how she came upon my novel and how it has great potential, etc. etc. Upon my responding favorably to her email, she gave me the name of the literary agent “Eric Simonoff.” Of course, I Googled him, and after seeing lovely pictures of him and his wife and a long list of writers with whom he’s worked, some of whom I’ve read, I contacted him immediately.

Before I go on, I want to say that at the get-go I told “Anna,” and then “Eric,” that I had been scammed for several thousand dollars and I was not going to fork over any money. For anything.

“Eric’s” ploy was to list all the great things about my book, and then to list the ways it could use improvement. Okay, those lists sounded realistic, too. I want to add here that both of their emails were literate with fine grammar and spelling. I didn’t realize then that thanks to AI you could be totally illiterate and non-English speaking and still put out a perfectly literate document in English.

Anyway, the request for money came in the form of “Eric,” the literary agent, so-called, saying a “professional editor” would be needed to whip my book into such great shape that when he would submit it to “traditional publishers” it would be in excellent standing, competing with the masses of other submitted novels that fall upon publishers’ desks these days. I, all innocence, had said, I thought that editing a book is something a publisher does upon acquiring a manuscript. Yes, that used to be the case, “Eric” said, but these days there’s so much competition that it’s best to have the editing done before the publisher reads it.

These emails went on for about ten days, during which time I was starting to get more suspicious. As it was, I was feeling that I had already told them too much about myself, such as my publishing history and future publishing plans. I believed them, until one day I didn’t.

When you’re suspicious, every little detail of an interaction is potentially revealing, potentially the one that turns something you consider legitimate into the opposite. In this case, what started with the so-called “Anna Michels” also ended with her. She, who was the initial contact, had put me in touch with “Eric Simonoff,” claiming that she would be part of the communication with him, including cc’s on all emails, presumably to make me feel more comfortable with him entering the relationship. Well, from the first email to him, I was the only one cc’ing emails to “Anna.” He never did. As the sense of “it’s too good to be true” started gaining momentum in my mind, I spoke about it to friends, one of whom in response to my saying the emails were so literate, said “That’s AI.”

Plus, there was repetition, of what they said and what I said, including that I wasn’t going to pay for anything. That’s when, after not hearing from “Anna” for a week, I got an email from her, which tried to persuade me to go along with “Eric’s” suggestion of hiring an independent editor to make the book better and more likely to be purchased by a “traditional” publisher. I even responded by providing other ways of doing that that wouldn’t cost anything.

That was the last I heard from them. A couple of times, still believing they were publishing professionals affiliated with the companies shown on Google, I almost wrote to them at those places. But then I reminded myself, Anna Michels and Eric Simonoff were not who I was dealing with.

Scams upon artists, including writers and especially writers who self-publish, have the particular quality of appealing to the heart of someone who is starving for praise and approval of their work. A few years ago, I actually had a woman contact me saying she wanted to buy some of my “artwork” for her husband’s birthday. My “artwork” consists of drawings I’ve done that have appeared on a very small scale, here and there; I was not only shocked when I heard from this woman but hugely flattered. I mean, my drawings really are great, aren’t they? Anyone who would just happen to see them would agree, no? In that case, too, after our negotiations went on for a few days, and the plan to pay and receive the drawings got more and more complicated, I realized something wasn’t kosher and called the whole thing off.

For some reason, the legal world doesn’t have a special category for scams against writers/artists. Like when I tried to recoup from my bank the money I lost two years ago, they didn’t call it fraud, they called it “non-deliverance of paid-for services.”

As the imposter scams happen more and more often, there’s another victim besides the writer, and that is the publisher/editor/agent who is being impostered. There is a real Anna Michel, and a real Eric Simonoff. I wish they would step up and do something about someone using their name and/or identity to rob other people of their money. The more we know, the less likely we are to go for the scam. Also, in the rare cases that the imposters get caught, there should be consequences. Now it’s likely happening with such great frequency because they don’t get caught and there are no consequences.

Easy money, eh? Maybe, but not for me.

Note from Victoria: I’ve gotten a number of reports of solicitations from the scam that contacted Denise, BestSolution Publishing. Its website includes a large roster of fake staffers with stolen or stock photos–including a stolen photo of the real Anna Michels, who is the Senior Editorial Director at Sourcebooks–and whose names don’t necessarily match the gender of their images.

Denise Beck-Clark is the author of Thirty Years Hence, A Novel and Concurrent Sentences: A True Story of Murder, Love and Redemption. She has also written essays on Medium and Substack. Find out more at her website: www.denisebeck-clark.com.

The post Guest Post: A Narrow Escape From an Impersonation Scam appeared first on Writer Beware.

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 abuses it needed to address were paid editing referral schemes and 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.

NOTE: Several appeals of the final settlement have been filed. See updates at the bottom of this post

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).

UPDATE 8/19/26: At the last minute, a group called Publishers Coordination Counsel has filed an appeal.

Because the appeal focuses on “issues related to the Order Granting in Part Motion for Attorneys’ Fees, Reimbursement of Expenses”, rather than payments to class members, it may not hold up the disbursement of payouts. But stay tuned.

The group filing the appeal is not class counsel nor part of the class, but rather a pair of law firms that signed an agreement with class counsel to represent the publishers who are part of the class. However, because the original judge in the case, Judge Alsup, was concerned about the number of “add-on” (his words) law firms making claims on settlement funds, he made clear that only class counsel was eligible to be paid. With its appeal, Publishers Coordination Counsel is challenging that exclusion.

For a detailed look at all of this, here’s Courtney Milan on Bluesky.

UPDATE 8/20/26: Another appeal has been filed at the last minute, by another law firm that’s not class counsel or part of the class. This appeal “does not seek to alter the total amount of attorneys’ fees awarded and is limited to the Order as it pertains to CDAS”, which per Courtney Milan, means that “they are probably going to ask for a piece of the $100 million or so that the class counsel were awarded.”

UPDATE 9/2/26: Just when you thought it was over…yet another notice of appeal has been filed, on August 31–this time by a class member whose objection to the settlement was tossed by the judge. The class member is unhappy with several aspects of the settlement, including the exclusion of books whose copyrights weren’t registered, the amount of class members’ payouts, and the amount of attorneys’ fees.

Since the last day to appeal the settlement was August 19 (30 days after the date of the final settlement), and this new appeal was filed on August 31, hasn’t it been filed too late? Apparently not; as Courtney Milan notes in a lengthy thread on the filing,

A notice on the docket indicates that the appeal wasn’t filed in the proper form, and instructs the class member to re-file. If she does so timely, Courtney speculates that payouts could be delayed, perhaps substantially.

Meanwhile, the settlement website continues to languish un-updated. Stay tuned.

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