News: Academic Publishing Weekly

Potential settlement in Anthropic's copyright lawsuit, new revenue sharing model from Perplexity, and a look at last year's publishing sales

Posted on August 29, 2025 in News

Are We Nearing the End of Anthropic’s Piracy Lawsuit?

A preliminary settlement has been achieved in an update to the closely watched AI training lawsuit leveraged by authors against Anthropic. As a refresher, back in June a judge deemed Anthropic’s use of authors’ titles for AI training to be fair use, but “ruled that the book authors could still take Anthropic to trial in a class action for pirating their works.” The trial was set for December, and the settlement may help Anthropic get out of “court-imposed penalties amounting to billions, possibly more than $1 trillion dollars.” The settlement is anticipated to be completed on September 3rd, and time will tell how authors respond to its details. Publishing Perspectives covered comments from Maria A. Pallante, president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers, a supporter of the “Publishers’ Coordination Counsel.” Pallante underlined, “We are cautiously optimistic that as details are finalized we’ll have a settlement that’s both pro-copyright and pro-innovation and one that provides relief and precedent that supports the creative community and therefore the public.”

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Perplexity Will Pay Publishers Under New Revenue Program

Perplexity is rolling out a new revenue model that will pay publishers “from direct, crawler and AI agent traffic through Perplexity’s AI-powered web browser Comet.” The revenue is leveraged from Perplexity’s Comet Plus subscriptions and publishers will receive 80 percent of the profit. In an interview with Digiday, Jessica Chan, Perplexity’s head of publisher partnerships, revealed that “publishers could stand to make ‘millions’ from this program.” Chan also discussed Perplexity’s commitment to user experience and utilization of publisher feedback. As for why the revenue model was created, Chan shared, “What I heard — what I continue to hear — wasn’t just a call for better pay, but it was really a need to kind of reimagine the relationship between AI and publishers in a way that actually works for everyone.” [Digiday]

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Publishing Sales Improved in 2024

According to the Association of American Publishers’ (AAP) StatShot Annual report, 2024 was a good year for U.S. publishing. Overall, the industry “generated a robust $32.5 billion in aggregate publishing revenue for books and course materials across print and digital formats, an increase of 4.1%” over 2023. University presses saw a revenue increase of roughly three percent. Print performed particularly well, comprising “50.5% of publishers’ revenue,” and digital formats also showed year-over-year growth. As for sales channels, online retail outpaced physical retailers. Nonetheless, during “the five-year period [covered by the report], [physical retail] grew 48.0%.” [Association of American Publishers]

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Springer Nature Partners with India for Research Integrity and Emerald Publishing Unites with GOBI

Springer Nature is working with India’s Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA) on an “academic engagement programme” called the RISE-UTTHAN initiative. The initiative centers on research integrity, open access, and “Book publishing in a changing world.” Dr. Sapna Poti, Director of Strategic Alliances at the Office of PSA, added that, “Through the RISE-UTTHAN initiative, we aim to build a robust ecosystem where researchers from Tier 2 and Tier 3 institutions are equipped to contribute meaningfully to global science and national development.” The initiative intends to offer academics “workshops, lectures, and hands-on training” and gradually increase its reach year-to-year. In other news, Emerald Publishing is adding its titles to GOBI Library Solutions as part of a new collaboration with EBSCO. Emerald underscored that the “partnership is aimed at ensuring that librarians can discover, evaluate, and order Emerald titles in the same place they already source content from leading publishers.”

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Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award Longlist

The Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award longlist has arrived. Comprised of 16 titles, the longlist covers topics “from geoeconomics to growth to geniuses.” For instance, the “geniuses” category includes books on Sam Altman, the head of OpenAI, and Ren Zhengfei, the founder of China’s Huawei. Carl Benedikt Frey’s How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations from Princeton University Press is also featured, along with the first novel to make the list in 15 years. As described by The Financial Times, Frey’s title “is a sweeping 1,000-year analysis of the fate of civilisations and institutions” and “asks what happens when the balance between innovation and bureaucracy fails.” [The Financial Times]

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