AI Company to Pay Authors $1.5 Billion in Settlement

Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.

Most Anticipated Fall 2025 New Releases

Whether we’re talking about books by prolific big name authors, works by literary darlings, or exciting debuts, this month alone promises so many anticipated books. If you’re already struggling to keep your preorders, holds, and TBR lists in order, the Los Angeles Times rounded up some of their most anticipated fall releases to keep it cute and curated. My top two anticipated reads for this month are included: The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy in fiction and Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy in nonfiction (memoir). I’m also looking at Somebody is Walking On Your Grave by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell. Enriquez wrote one of the most haunting, disturbing books I have ever read (Our Share of Night, also translated by McDowell). I’m also hugely grateful to this list for reminding me that Quan Barry’s newest, The Unveiling, is out soon. While plenty of big-name authors like Elizabeth Gilbert, Dan Brown, and Patricia Lockwood who have new books upcoming are missing from this list, you’ll find some interesting books from indie presses that may otherwise fall under the radar. Give it a gander!

Anthropic Agrees to Pay $1.5 Billion to Authors

Claude, you thieving tool. Anthropic has agreed to pay $1.5 billion in a settlement to authors whose work the company pirated in order to train its Large Language Model, Claude. A lawyer for the author plaintiffs described it as possibly “the largest copyright recovery ever,” and the outcome of the case seems likely to set precedent for other companies with chatbots where copyrighted materials were pirated. The pivotal caveat from the federal judge who delivered a ruling in the case brought against Anthropic, which found that training the chatbot using copyrighted works wasn’t in and of itself illegal, was that those copyrighted training materials must be acquired legally. Anthropic would have had to answer for acquiring pirated copies through “shadow libraries.” This is a major win for authors and artists.

Statler and Waldorf See Themselves Out

If you’re wondering why there’s been so much discourse about critics, firstly, you are deeply online and I see you, and, secondly, it’s because professional criticism is experiencing a big shift. Layoffs, the retirement of entire book review sections, and shrinking coverage of cultural criticism mark a moment where, for various reasons, media companies are shifting their outlook on this content and making big decisions that sometimes mean an end to legacy review sections. The Intelligencer takes a big look at this shift, including what it means that media consumption has altered so significantly and opinions are a dime a dozen, with commentary from people in the business. I’ll also tell you that we don’t publish traditional reviews because our readership has proven to be largely disinterested in that kind of content. I’ve long looked at review sections as a sort of signifier of high-brow publications with deep enough pockets to spend on content with swiftly diminishing returns, but there’s a reason the new spinoff of The Office lampoons a struggling newspaper. The Toledo Truth Teller is all of us.

Award-Winning THE LIBRARIANS Documentary Sets Widespread Release

In a room filled to the brim, attendees at the American Library Association’s (ALA) annual conference in Philadelphia this summer watched Kim A. Snyder’s documentary The Librarians. The Librarians debuted at Sundance Film Festival in January 2025, and in the following months, traveled the country doing shows at libraries and festivals. ALA attendees watching the show gasped and shouted numerous times throughout, as they saw fellow librarians whose lives have been turned upside down, thanks to the nearly five-year fight over books and education in America’s public schools and libraries.

Read all about it here.