If you are a claimant in the Bartz v Anthropic copyright infringement settlement, you may have received an email this week updating you on the status of your claims. For undisputed claims, you can simply review the email and claim update but do not need to take further steps. “Disputed claims” are ones in which different claimants to a work – usually authors and publishers – are claiming different percentage splits of the payout for that work. When you log in with the claim number and pin they provide to you in the email, you can see what each claimant has put down as to how the payout should be split.
Textbook Authors File Lawsuit Against Meta
By Kim Pawlak
On July 2, 2026, a class action lawsuit was filed against Meta and Mark Zuckerberg on behalf of textbook authors whose copyrighted textbooks were used without authorization or compensation to train its large language model (LLM), Llama.
Textbook & Academic Authors Association Announces 2026 Textbook Award Winners
Forty-seven textbooks have been awarded 2026 Textbook Awards by the Textbook & Academic Authors Association (TAA) Awards Committee. Twelve textbooks received William Holmes McGuffey Longevity Awards, 11 textbooks received Most Promising New Textbook Awards, and 24 textbooks received Textbook Excellence Awards.
In Response to Motion Filed By TAA, Sage Agrees to Send Email Correcting Earlier Assertions as to Authors’ Share of Settlement Proceeds in Bartz v. Anthropic
On December 22, 2025, the Textbook & Academic Authors Association (TAA) filed a motion to intervene in the Bartz v. Anthropic case, asking for an order to require curative notice and injunctive relief by Sage Publishing after the company sent a misleading email to its authors. In that email, Sage directed its authors to claim a specific percentage of the settlement and asserted that by not doing so, the authors could delay getting their payment. After negotiating with class attorneys and with Sage about sending a curative email that addresses the main concerns detailed by TAA in the motion, TAA agreed to withdraw the motion. Sage authors should receive the curative email this week.
TAA’s motion was filed after TAA Executive Director Kim Pawlak received an email from a TAA member on December 12 forwarding an email the author received from her publisher, Sage.
2025 TAA Virtual Conference on Textbook & Academic Authoring Call for Proposals Now Open
The TAA Conference Committee invites proposals for its 2025 Textbook & Academic Authoring Conference, which will be held online June 6-7. Presenting at TAA’s 2025 Conference provides an opportunity to share your knowledge, experiences, and ideas with other textbook authors, academic authors, and industry professionals. The theme is “The Future is Now.” We welcome proposals from first-time and veteran presenters! The deadline for submitting a proposal is October 13, 2024.
Why You Shouldn’t Publish a Custom Textbook (And Why You Should)
By Sierra Pawlak
In her 2023 TAA webinar, “Is Custom Textbook Publishing Right for You?” Rebecca Paynter describes the journey of creating a custom textbook. Paynter is the associate director of the editorial team at the University of Arizona Global Campus, or UAGC. UAGC hosts online courses that are five weeks long, “which is not a lot of time for students to read a traditional textbook in full,” says Paynter. Because of this, her department creates custom textbooks for many of these courses, with the help of “faculty and other subject matter experts to better meet student needs… and potentially [create] books that can meet unmet needs out in the broader market,” she says.