During an earnings call for News Corp, parent company of HarperCollins, CEO Robert Thomson said, “We are an AI inputs company, and that fact was reflected in our recent deal with Meta, which complements our partnership with OpenAI.” He elaborated, “Semiconductors are inputs. Energy is an input. Editorial is an absolutely essential input. AI engines require information, and they need constant updates to remain relevant.”
News Corp, which is also the parent company of the Wall Street Journal, is actively negotiating deals with tech companies, seeking licensing income, and keeping track of any company that scrapes its content for training without licensing. Said Thomson, “We are tracking a number of dodgy digital firms scraping illicitly, illegally our precious content and shamelessly reselling this purloined property.” In 2024, HarperCollins struck an AI training deal with an unnamed tech partner (believed to be Microsoft) for nonfiction backlist, offering authors $2,500 per title if they opted in. HarperCollins has also stood out among the Big Five in announcing AI initiatives related to animation and video adaptations.
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.
