Indie Authors Unite

An Important Note From Greyson Media - February 5th, 2026

Greyson Media has recently posted a number of communications about an upcoming, multi-plaintiff lawsuit supported by Hrbek Law LLC for authors who have opted out, or are considering opting out, of the Bartz v. Anthropic class action lawsuit.

We wanted to provide some additional clarity around those communications. Please note that:

·        All communications from Greyson Media regarding this lawsuit are informational in nature only. To proceed with opting out of the Bartz class action lawsuit and joining the multi-plaintiff Anthropic lawsuit, please contact Hrbek Law LLC (dhrbek@hrbeklaw.com).

·        Any authors that decide to participate in the multi-plaintiff Anthropic lawsuit associated with Deborah Hrbek would be joining as unique, singular litigants and not members of a class action suit.

·        Any authors considering joining this multi-plaintiff lawsuit are urged to review their options and proceed according to their specific situation.

KEY DATES:

February 9 - last day to opt out so you can sue for up to $150K per book.

March 9 - last day to opt back in if you change your mind.

March 30 - last day to opt in and claim $3K award.

CONTACT Hrbek Law if you have any questions.

Thank you for supporting the arts.

Hrbek Law LLC | 295 Madison Avenue 22nd Floor | New York, NY 10017 US |

dhrbek@hrbeklaw.com

FEBRUARY 2nd UPDATE:

Hrbek Law is supporting an IP litigation firm that is representing authors who opt out of the Anthropic class action settlement on a contingency fee basis - no out-of-pocket payment from authors needed. If successful, authors can get up to $150K per book. Authors now have until Monday, February 9 to opt out of the Bartz v. Anthropic class action settlement and reserve their right to sue for a larger damages award.

Anthropic - Multi-Plaintiff Lawsuit for Authors who Opt Out of Class Settlement

Call to Action for Writers: OPT-OUT of Anthropic class action settlement by February 9, 2026 to preserve your rights!

In the course of the class action, Bartz v. Anthropic, the $350 billion dollar AI company admitted to having used pirated copies of over six million literary works to train Claude, its large language model (LLM). Claude was developed to "write" new books that will be owned by Anthropic and will compete with the literary works being sold by human authors. Many authors have concluded that $3,000 per book to put them out of business is an insult. Instead, they are opting out of the settlement and joining the multi-plaintiff suit being spearheaded by James Bartolomei of the Duncan Firm and Mark Kaufman of Kaufman & Kahn, LLP. The lawyers are handling this matter on a contingency basis, which means that they will cover all litigation costs and if the case is successful, the lawyers will get compensated with 1/3 of the damages award.

Statutory damages of up to $150,000 per eligible book are available. No out-of-pocket legal fees or litigation expenses from authors is required to participate in this alternative case against Anthropic. While there is no guarantee that the maximum statutory award will be made, there is a lot of daylight between $3,000 and $150,000 and many writers are seeing this as an opportunity to ask a jury to give them more significant compensation from the tech giant who stole their creative content. Actual damages do not have to be proven to get an award of up to $150K per book. Statutory damages serve as punitive damages to be awarded if the jury considers the behavior of the copyright infringer - here, Anthropic - to have been particularly egregious, namely willful, reckless or intentional. 

Authors have until February 9, 2026 to opt out of the settlement, thereby reserving the right to bring a separate lawsuit against Anthropic to seek greater compensation.

To see if any of your works are covered by the settlement in the Anthropic class action, search here: https://secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup. 

If any of your works are on the Works Lookup list, this confirms they were illegally copied by Anthropic. To receive the $3K per book, you are required to submit a claim by March 30, 2026. If you want to reserve your right to join the multi-plaintiff (individual claims) suit that Hrbek Law is supporting, you must send a formal opt-out notice to Anthropic no later than February 9, 2026. If you explore that option and later decide you'd prefer to take the class action settlement amount instead, you can opt back in by March 9, 2026. But if you miss the deadline for opting out, you can't later change your mind about that. March 30, 2026 is the final deadline to make a claim.

KEY DATES:

February 9 - last day to opt out so you can sue for up to $150K per book.

March 9 - last day to opt back in if you change your mind.

March 30 - last day to opt in and claim $3K award.

Please forward to any authors you know (including self-published). We need to spread the word among the writer community to ensure they don't miss out.

CONTACT Hrbek Law if you have any questions: https://www.hrbeklaw.com/contact.html

Thank you for supporting the arts.

JANUARY 28th UPDATE

Great News! As a result of an application by the lead lawyer in our case (James from Duncan Firm), the judge agreed to extend the opt out deadline to February 9! Please help spread the word.

JANUARY 24th UPDATE

While numerous ongoing lawsuits have attempted to address the use of books to train LLMs (large language models used by AI companies), these entities continue to acquire books in order to populate and train their systems.

In response, Ingram Content Group, the world's largest distributor of physical and digital content, has created a process allowing client publishers to opt out of selling their books to any AI entity. This should be available to us authors. 

To find out more, please refer to the following article: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/99453-ingram-offers-to-not-sell-books-to-ai-companies.html.

JANUARY 20th UPDATE

Only 9 days until deadline for authors to opt out of Anthropic settlement - ACTION REQUIRED.

Please read this short article for important information about the class action settlement in Bartz v. Anthropic. Authors need to opt out by Jan 29 in order to reserve their right to sue Anthropic to seek statutory damages under the US Copyright Act of up to $150K per eligible book.

The linked article below contains information about the multi-plaintiff (individual claims) lawsuit being brought to seek a larger award.

KEY DATES:

January 29 - last day to opt out.

March 9 - last day to opt back in if you change your mind.

March 30 - last day to opt in and claim $3K award.

Please forward to any published authors you know (including self-published). We need to spread the word among the writer community to ensure they don't miss out.

Thank you for supporting the arts.

Link to article: https://www.hrbeklaw.com/anthropic-multi-plaintiff-lawsuit-for-authors-who-opt-out-of-cla.html.

JANUARY 12th UPDATE - DATE FOR OPTING OUT HAS BEEN PUSHED BACK TO JANUARY 29th, 2026

Please be aware that the January 15th date to opt out of the Bartz v Anthropic suit has been extended to January 29, 2026. This gives everyone a bit more time to weigh their options.

JANUARY 5th UPDATE - TIME IS RUNNING OUT!

Time is running out to opt out of the Anthropic class action settlement. You must act before January 15, 2026. The billion dollar corporation of Anthropic is hoping we authors via ignorance or apathy do not take up the call to challenge their egregious behavior. As I understand the Anthropic settlement as of today, authors who do not opt out will automatically, permanently lose all rights to contest their copyrights being stolen by Anthropic. Those authors will be pulled into this settlement whether they agree with it or not and will never be able to contest it in the future.

If your book sold very little, a $3,000 payment (less after the lawyers, publishers and agents take their respective cuts) might seem agreeable for giving up your rights but you should be aware that copyright law allows for up to $150,000 per book stolen. You may not see any money by opting out but personally, I, as an author, want to take a stand against the audacity and sheer hubris of Anthropic stealing our books. If you share that sentiment, I heartily recommend you opt out. If you do opt out and learn more, you can always opt back into the settlement at a later date but at least you will have all the facts when you do.

To find out if you are eligible to participate in this court case, go to https://secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup and select “Search by Author”, enter each of your pen names one at a time and click on the “Search” button. If any of your works appear, and the copyright was timely registered, those books are eligible for the settlement in the Bartz v Anthropic case. If your books are eligible for the Bartz settlement then you can participate in the new law suit that Christopher Greyson is spearheading by opting out of the Bartz settlement and joining the multi-plaintiff action. (Please note that you can opt back in to the Bartz settlement before March 9 if you decide not to join any additional lawsuits).

We will be holding an informational meeting this Friday, January 9th at 12 p.m. Eastern Time. Please join us via this Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2124802400.

Christopher Greyson
New York Times International Bestselling Author
GreysonMedia.com

*****

DECEMBER 22nd UPDATE!

Fellow Indie Author Christopher Greyson here. I wanted you to know that a big law firm out of Arkansas is planning to file a lawsuit against Anthropic, the tech company that stole our books. The plaintiffs will be authors who opt out of the settlement and sue for the copyright violation involved in their theft of the authors’ works to train their LLM. The law firm would handle the cases on a contingency basis. They would cover the costs of the suit and get paid a percentage of any settlement or award.  

Informational video conference calls are being scheduled for Tues. Dec. 23 and  Sat. Dec. 27 - and depending on interest, possibly a third on Mon. Dec. 29.  Authors who are considering opting out of the Anthropic settlement can join the call to get more information about this lawsuit and have their questions answered about available options in connection with the Anthropic matter, deadlines for decision-making, consequences of action or inaction, etc. 

If you would like to participate in one of these Zoom calls, please contact my lawyer, Deborah Hrbek, to let her know at https://www.hrbeklaw.com/contact.html. Deborah will provide you with the dates/times/login details for the informational meetings as soon as these have been confirmed.

I highly recommend you at least consider learning more about the lawsuit as the payout, if we win, would far exceed the miserly amount being offered. Plus it’s a matter of principle - we don’t give up any of our copyrights.

Christopher Greyson
New York Times International Bestselling Author
GreysonMedia.com

*****

My name is Christopher Greyson, and I am a storyteller. My journey from working the nightshift unloading trucks to a New York Times bestselling author wasn’t an easy one and I’m sure yours wasn’t either. As writers, we open our hearts and bleed out on the page. Studies show that over 80% of adults want to write a book, but less than 1% publish it. 97% never finish their first draft. Only 3% complete a manuscript. 0.6% have their book published. 

You did it! But all of your hard work was stolen.

I am writing to you today about an issue that affects all of us, no matter where we are in our writing careers. Anthropic – a large technology firm in California – has stolen millions of books. Our books. Anthropic has admitted in court (Bartz v. Anthropic) that they downloaded our books from illegal websites onto their company computers in order to train its Artificial Intelligence (AI) bot, commonly known as “Claude”.  Even if you’re not on the “official” list of writers who have had their work stolen, your books may still have been ripped off. But the theft doesn’t stop there. Claude allows anyone to leverage our work to create similar books that they can then claim as their own, in order to sell and compete with us on Amazon and every other book selling site.

As part of the settlement reached in Bartz v. Anthropic, Anthropic has agreed to pay copyright holders and remove the unlawfully obtained and pirated book files from their computer storage. The total settlement amount in Bartz v. Anthropic has been set at $1.5 billion dollars, but the problem is that these funds will primarily be awarded to the lawyers and publishing houses, leaving us authors with less than $3,000 per book.

They want to destroy our livelihood and use us to pull off the largest creative heist in history. Additionally, the Bartz case will not establish the fact that using author novels in this manner is not an appropriate exercise of “fair use”, which means that not only have they stolen our work, they are going to continue use our words, our creativity, and our inspiration, and their computer program (Claude) will regurgitate it and claim it as its own. And we will get paid—nothing.

That’s wrong, it’s outrageous, and should be stopped.

Other Indie authors and I are filing a suit to prevent this. Would you like to join us? If you do, please help by forwarding this message to any/all authors you know!

Sincerely,

Fellow Indie Author

Christopher Greyson
New York Times International Bestselling Author
GreysonMedia.com