All posts tagged: publishers

Publishers Argue AI Firms Should Pay for Content as Copyright Case Advances

Publishers Argue AI Firms Should Pay for Content as Copyright Case Advances

Published by skeptic

A host of copyright infringement lawsuits filed by news organizations against the ChatGPT developer OpenAI are heading toward a new phase, and the Trump administration’s intervention is raising the question of just how costly it would be for AI companies to pay to license the content their models are trained on. The cases include those filed by The New York Times and by Ziff Davis, which owns CNET. The parties filed briefings this month asking a federal court to rule on a handful of issues, namely whether OpenAI’s use of the published material constituted fair use under US copyright law.  But a statement of interest from the federal government, saying that licensing barriers would burden AI companies, drew a rebuke out of court from Ziff Davis CEO Vivek Shah. Writing in Fortune, Shah compared the total value of royalties and licensing payments in the US music industry — under $20 billion per year — with the $750 billion that OpenAI has told investors it expects to spend on computing infrastructure by 2030.  Something like $20 …

Podcast mastery: How publishers can find an audience and make money from it

Podcast mastery: How publishers can find an audience and make money from it

Published by Sam Flores

Chris Stone, executive producer for podcasts and video at the New Statesman and founder of Podcast Crew. Picture: Submitted Publishers must identify a target audience and niche before launching a podcast, according to Chris Stone, executive producer for podcasts and video at The New Statesman. Stone, who also founded B2B marketplace Podcast Crew, said publishers should track relevant metrics and be prepared to hire at least one full-time podcast producer. Since Stone started at The New Statesman in 2020, he has overseen its transition to video podcasting. Since making the podcast the primary Youtube output for the publisher, subscribers on the platform have grown from 30,000 to 220,000, he said. When should you launch a podcast? “I’ll tell you when a publisher shouldn’t enter the podcast space, which is when they fancy doing a podcast because they think it’ll be cool,” said Stone, adding this risks it becoming a “hobby project”. When a publisher has enough trust and engagement with its audience, he added, a podcast is a “good asset” to introduce to drive paid …

Can SME licensing deals be bigger for publishers than AI?

Can SME licensing deals be bigger for publishers than AI?

Published by Sam Flores

Publishers are already adapting to a distribution environment in which search and AI increasingly mediate how audiences find information. Reuters Institute’s 2026 report found that publishers expect search referrals to fall 43% over the next three years, while Google organic search traffic to more than 2,500 news sites fell 33% globally between November 2024 and November 2025. That pressure is making licensing more relevant. AI deals are the most visible example. Press Gazette reports that OpenAI has agreements with publishers including News Corp., the Financial Times, Axel Springer, The Atlantic, Vox Media, Time, and the Associated Press. Meanwhile, Meta, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have also pursued publisher partnerships. The scale can be substantial. Press Gazette has reported annual licensing arrangements ranging from roughly $1 million to $5 million for some medium-sized publishers, with major media groups reaching considerably higher values. News Corp’s reported OpenAI agreement, for example, could be worth as much as $250 million over five years. For publishers, however, the larger question may be how many different forms of licensing can be built …

Authors push back as publishers and agents make claims on Anthropic settlement

Authors push back as publishers and agents make claims on Anthropic settlement

Published by skeptic

Some authors hoping to receive their share of Anthropic’s $1.5 billion copyright settlement said they received surprising emails this week — emails informing them that someone else was making a claim on their payments. Anthropic settled a copyright class action suit last year, after a judge ruled that training AI models on copyrighted material is legal under fair use doctrine, but pirating that material was not. The deal received final approval in July, allowing the payments to move forward. Under the terms of the settlement, the authors of nearly 500,000 titles will be paid $3,000 for each pirated work. If the book is still in-print with a traditional publisher, the money will be split 50-50 between author and publisher. If the book was self-published, or if the publisher reverted the rights by allowing the book to go out-of-print, then the author should get the entire payment. But writers have been posting on social media that publishers seem to be claiming more than their fair share of some payments. For example, mystery and thriller author April …

How two California indie publishers are reshaping literary success

How two California indie publishers are reshaping literary success

Published by Sam Flores

When the Booker Prize longlist was recently announced, it included a book with the memorable title “May We Feed the King.” The debut novel by British author Rebecca Perry isn’t yet available in the U.S., and when it does hit shelves, it will be coming from Transit Books, a small Bay Area publisher run by the husband-and-wife team Adam Z. Levy and Ashley Nelson Levy. Cited by the Booker committee as “a playful, stirring meditation on history and storytelling” about a curator and a king, the book “has been an early favorite with indie booksellers,” Ashley says. “May We Feed the King” by Rebecca Perry (Transit) “We knew the book was special when we acquired it,” Adam adds. “Ever since, we’ve been crossing our fingers and knocking on wood and sending up flares to the Booker gods, and sent the book to the printer a little earlier than usual just in case.” Transit, known for publishing intelligent international fiction, began about a decade ago, when Ashley and Adam were convinced that great works of literature …

You Choose by Nick Sharratt and Pippa Goodhart: Nine publishers turned this book down. Now it’s an absolute must-have for all children

You Choose by Nick Sharratt and Pippa Goodhart: Nine publishers turned this book down. Now it’s an absolute must-have for all children

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter They say never meet your heroes. Meeting your daughter’s, though? Pretty fun. Pippa Goodhart and Nick Sharratt are the unassuming, slightly mischievous pair behind one of the biggest hits in children’s publishing, the multimillion-selling You Choose books – which my little girl is completely obsessed with. Look online and you’ll see parents sharing stories of how their children’s copies were so loved they fell to pieces; that no other book got a look-in at bedtime for over a year. I can wholeheartedly say every child should have a copy. For the uninitiated, the concept is simple. Each beautifully drawn double-page spread encourages the reader to make a simple choice from a set of brightly coloured illustrations, crafting a unique day in the life (the food and pets pages are our most pored over). The first one was published 23 years ago, …

Apple in Talks to Pay Publishers for News Content to Power Siri AI

Apple in Talks to Pay Publishers for News Content to Power Siri AI

Published by skeptic

Apple has approached publishers to establish content deals that would give Siri AI access to current news and information, reports The Wall Street Journal. Apple is proposing multiyear agreements where publishers would receive payment when their content is used, which is different from standard AI deals. Typical deals between AI companies and news organizations have set fees for broad content access. Apple has discussed a nine-figure budget for the payments. The Wall Street Journal says Apple previously inked deals that included AI training rights. Apple has also worked with publishers for its Apple News+ service since 2019, though some publishers were unhappy with the content deals and ended their partnerships. ‌Siri‌ AI is set to launch this fall in iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27. ‌Siri‌ AI is a major departure from the prior version of ‌Siri‌, and Apple has an incentive to ensure accurate news headlines. An iOS 18 notification summary feature turned out to be an embarrassment after Apple Intelligence generated false headlines that misled users. Apple ended up removing news summaries …

Live blogging mastery: Tips for publishers from Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow

Live blogging mastery: Tips for publishers from Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow

Published by Sam Flores

The Guardian political corresspondent Andrew Sparrow. Picture: Andrew Sparrow Publishers looking to succeed in live blogs need to focus on “intensely newsy” topics and write with personality, according to The Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow. The reporter has written a live blog on politics for the publisher since 2008, which he was recognised for when he won Press Gazette’s Political journalist of the year award in 2011. He told Press Gazette why live blogs aren’t for every story, and how former editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger’s early investment in tech helped lead to The Guardian seeing around 15% of its total page views come from live blogs. How did you start out in live blogging? Sparrow started live blogging for The Guardian “when website news was just taking off”, with the role advertised as being to “constantly update the politics news”. Sparrow added that having to continually rewrite a conventional news article for breaking news “didn’t make very much sense”. “In 2008, it felt like digital news was being written according to rules that were created for print, and …

Google search traffic to leading UK publishers set to halve by Q3 2027

Google search traffic to leading UK publishers set to halve by Q3 2027

Published by Sam Flores

Google AI Mode. Picture: Google Search referral traffic is in decline due to increasing usage of AI. This has been common knowledge among online publishers since the proliferation of chat interfaces and generated summaries in search results, and we now have concrete data to prove it with the AOP’s newly launched “Artificial Intelligence Publisher Impact Study”. As champions of premium online publishers, it is of paramount importance that we not only answer why this trend is occurring but provide insight on what can be done about it. To that end, we commissioned DJB Strategies to investigate where referral declines are most concentrated and where there are pockets of resilience. The study is comprised of two components: six months of traffic analysis across eight major UK publishing groups totalling 10.8 billion pageviews (the sample accounted for about 80% of total traffic, after long-tail URLs were removed), along with a survey of consumer awareness and usage of AI tools, conducted by Ipsos. In this first of three articles examining and explaining the study’s findings, we will be …

First-party data tips for publishers: Masterclass from Schibsted

First-party data tips for publishers: Masterclass from Schibsted

Published by Sam Flores

Gustaf Eriksson, executive vice president of consumer business at Schibsted Media (left), selection of Schibsted’s brands (top right) and Schibsted homepage screenshot (bottom right). Pictures: Schibsted Publishers looking to collect first-party data should skip registration walls and offer low-cost subscription trials instead, according to Norwegian media company Schibsted which has shared its tips for other publishers. Gustaf Eriksson, executive vice president of consumer business at Schibsted Media, told Press Gazette why free registration walls could cause friction between publishers and potential subscribers when sharing insights on how publishers can best approach first-party data collection. Schibsted, which owns Norway’s two largest newspapers and the Nordics’ biggest tabloid, has around 1.5 million subscribers across its news brands, including 1.25 million digital-only subscribers. How has Schibsted built a large online subscriber base? “Scandinavians are pretty far ahead when it comes to how online they are,” said Eriksson. Schibsted is heavy on its newspaper production but also owns two large TV stations and a podcast platform. Its business spans text, video and audio. “So broadband usage was very high …