Last week, in my deep dive into the Anthropic case, Dave Hansen at the Authors Alliance noted that upcoming hearings would consider just how much the attorneys in the case should get paid and how that directly affects what authors and publishers receive. For class-action suits, it is a zero-sum game: If attorneys receive more, then claimants receive less.
Attorneys’ fees became a point of contention when the original judge objected to fees for any law firm not officially appointed by the court. (Two additional firms were pulled in by the authors’ counsel and were not approved by the court.) Now the attorneys’ fees have dropped from $300 million (20 percent of the award) to $187.5 million (12.5 percent of the award).
New case filings indicate nearly 100,000 claims have been filed; if that number holds, then each work will receive $3,700. Learn more.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
This is great news. Among the many people who deserve to be thanked many times is author Andi Bartz, who writes an excellent Substack AND is one of three named plaintiffs for this suit. https://andibartz.substack.com/p/why-i-sued-anthropic