Writer Beware

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If Your Publisher Promised to Register Your Copyright, Check Your Registration Now

Header image: the word COPYRIGHT in multi-colored letters on on multi-colored blocks, against a dark background of metal typesetting letters (Credit: jdrv_art / Shutterstock.com)

AUG 29, 2025September 26, 202531 COMMENTS

A couple of years ago, while searching the US Copyright Office's public copyright registration database on behalf of an author wanting to know if their copyright had been registered as required by their book contract, I decided on a whim to check my own copyright registrations.

I hadn't felt any need to do so before. While smaller publishers generally leave it to authors to register their copyrights, for larger houses it's standard for the publisher to register on authors' behalf, at the publisher's expense. Most of my contracts have been with imprints of big publishers. No reason to doubt they'd followed through, right?

But when I looked at my registration record, I realized that one book was missing: my YA historical, Passion Blue, published in 2012 by Skyscape, an imprint of Amazon Publishing. Skyscape hadn't registered copyright for this book, even though the contract stipulated that they should; and now, several years beyond the five-year post-publication window in which registration provides evidentiary benefits, it was too late to do anything about it.

PUBLISHER COMPLAINTS

Author Complaints, Conflicts of Interest at Fortis Publishing

AUG 22, 2025August 22, 202522 COMMENTS

Last year, I began to receive complaints from authors with UK-based Fortis Publishing.

Issues cited included poorly proofed and/or formatted books (missing images or chapters, for example); little or no marketing; delayed or missing sales reports and royalty payments; poor communication and failure to respond to emails and questions, editing fees, possible fictitious staff members, authors' names attached without permission to book blurbs they didn't write, and extra-contractual changes to royalty reporting schedules, despite the contract's stipulation that modifications must be made in writing and signed by both parties.

Writers also reported substantial conflicts of interest (more on that below).

Bartz v Anthropic: Find Out if You May Be Part of This Class Action

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AUG 15, 2025September 26, 202534 COMMENTS

Almost exactly a year ago, a group of authors filed suit against AI company Anthropic over its creation of an enormous library of digitized books to train its Claude LLMs. In addition to purchasing and scanning physical books (a la Google for its Google Books project), Anthropic also downloaded thousands of books that had been illegally uploaded to pirate sites, copying them multiple times for use in AI training.

Anthropic did not seek authors' permission for any of this, arguing (as most AI companies do) that appropriating copyrighted material for AI training is fair use. The authors who brought the suit disagreed, arguing that Anthropic's unpermissioned compiling and copying of their work constituted copyright infringment. (You can see the original complaint here.)

This past June, the judge in the case issued a mixed ruling, determining that while Anthropic's digitzation of physical books, and its employment of its digitized library for AI training, both fit the four factors necessary to qualify as fair use, its downloading of pirated copies did not, and justified a trial on that issue. On July 17, 2025, the judge certified a class of LibGen & PiLiMi Pirated Books authors (LibGen is pirate site Library Genesis; PiLiMi is pirate site Pirate Library Mirror). The class consists of:

BOOK MARKETING SCAMS

Return of the Nigerian Prince: A New Twist on Book Marketing Scams

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AUG 1, 2025September 27, 202593 COMMENTS

Marketing scams have always been plentiful. Over the past year or so, though, they've really surged.

I've written about one type of marketing scam--the "friendly author" social media scam, in which someone impersonating a real (and often very well-known) author reaches out with a direct message, ostensibly because they're interested in your books or your writing, but actually in order to refer you to some sort of shady marketing service.

Now there's a new type of marketing scam. It has the same starting point--direct solicitation--and the same end goal--tricking writers into handing over money. The new part is the steps that happen in between.

CONTRACTS

Contract Controversy (and Change) at Must Read Magazines

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JUL 25, 2025November 24, 202518 COMMENTS

In a surprise move this past February, a new group called Must Read Magazines acquired five well-known genre magazines: Asimov's Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

With the exception of Fantasy & Science Fiction, which was owned by Gordon Van Gelder, the magazines previously belonged to Penny Publications (which retains its large stable of puzzle and crossword magazines). The magazines' existing staffers have been retained by the new owner, and the magazines will continue to publish in print.

Per reporting in Locus Magazine, Must Read "is financially backed by a small group of genre fiction fans" headed by Steven Salpeter, formerly a literary agent at Curtis Brown. The magazines' new mastheads describe Must Read Magazines as a division of Must Read Books Publishing, which in turn is a division of 1 Paragraph Inc., a company incorporated in Delaware in May 2024 and registered in Florida in January 2025. Nearly five months after the acquisition, Must Read Books's website is still a placeholder, with a generic URL (bookpublishing.center) and a Norfolk VA address.

VANITY PUBLISHING AND PAY TO PLAY

When an Interview Isn’t Exactly What It Seems: NewYox Media and Its Suite of Magazines

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JUL 11, 2025July 11, 202533 COMMENTS

A few months back, I began getting questions about emails like this one, from a UK-based magazine called Reader's Hou se:

What author wouldn't be excited by an invitation to interview in a seemingly established and reputable literary magazine (even if they'd never heard of it before)? Those who responded received a followup like this one (the emphasis is mine):

For authors whose inboxes are stuffed with pay-to-play interview offers, this will seem like a welcome change. And indeed, the interview really is free...and it's a real interview, with questions personalized to the author and their book (which is why I've redacted them in the example above).