The Anthropic Settlement and Other Behind the Scenes Stuff!

I had a question about the Anthropic Settlement, what it is, and why it is influencing my writing order in the future. In addition to this, I’ve had a bunch of other questions from a bunch of other different sources, so I’m just going to try to address as many as I can.

But before we begin, here’s a picture of my patio space during the day and during the night.

Nighttime first, because it’s pretty:

Daytime view, guest star, my knees from my favorite of the two chairs.

My patio is 99% done, and I’m super pleased with it.

(I need to sweep, do some last tidying, and figure out what’s going in my last empty pot.)

Anyway, back to business. I’ll start with the Anthropic Settlement. The link takes you to the primary settlement website with the legal firm handling all the details. This FAQ link answers the most common questions, but I’m going to boil it down below.

Essentially, a few years back, Anthropic, an AI firm who makes a critter named Claude, decided it was a Really Good Idea to steal a bunch of books to train its AI.

They were caught in the act.

A few authors decided to go after the multi billion dollar corporation. The multi billion dollar corporation, caught in the act of piracy, decided settling might be a good idea, because an actual lawsuit might cost them even more than settling. (It can be up to $150,000 per instance, and they stole several million books. Of those several million books, roughly half a million of them were appropriately copyrighted.)

The settlement, if everyone claims their titles, will give authors roughly $2,000 a title. Which is definitely better than the $0 we were paid when they stole our books and used them to train their AI bot.

I have over thirty titles involved in the settlement. I will have to pay taxes on the settlement money, but assuming it goes through, I will be using the settlement money to cover the difference in earnings from what I could have earned if I worked on more profitable books rather than sit down and finish everything from the low performing series.

Now, it’s possible that the settlement may not go forward, or the terms will be significantly changed. Why?

This post covers it quite well: in short, the attorneys/legal firm are doing a money grab, as they do during these things. Ultimately, the judge will make a final decision in April, including what the attorneys will actually make. The last I heard, the judge wanted the attorneys to take less. (And I won’t complain a peep if more of the money goes to the authors.)

So, that’s Anthropic in a nutshell. Bad corporation stole millions of books to profit with their AI bot, they got caught, are now paying the piper so they don’t have a bigger problem on their hands later.

This is the important chart from the post linked above:

I count as a Sole Author / Rightsholder.

Ope, as I was searching for information on the number of claimants, I found this gem from earlier this week: the attorneys behind the Anthropic Settlement have dropped their claim request from $300 million down to roughly $187 million. That’s in line with the judgment issued prior, which significantly lessens the chance of the settlement failing.

Plus more money in our pockets. However, that DOES change the chart above, but in a good way. It doesn’t change it THAT much, though. $100 million over 482,460 works is a big bad $207. I mean, I will take that $207, but it is what it is what it is.

I put in claims for all my eligible books, so we will see. But with 30+ titles, and I’ll use 30 titles for math simplicity, $79,584 might be headed my way, of which 50% will go to the government for tax purposes.

That leaves me with $39,792, which I will put away for rent, bills, and production fees to cover as much as possible as a gap between what I COULD have earned versus the reality of producing a bunch of lesser liked books in a row.

I DID do my best to stack the cards in my favor, organizing the books in question by the earnings of the previous book in the series. But $39k only goes so far, so I’ll be busting ass trying to make sure I get 4-5 books done a year during the time period to hopefully keep my money stable-ish.

Patreon really, really helps with this, because Patreon is my sole consistent source of income. (It fluctuates, but it fluctuates very little.) I will be heavily reliant on Patreon in the next few years to keep writing because of this.

So, I’ll start with Patreon and commonly asked questions from that.

Patreon is a subscription where Patrons support Creators. The Patrons pay a monthly fee (or yearly) sum, I provide them various stuff based on their tiers Monday through Friday. It’s a bit chaos, but we have fun.

Q: How much is Patreon’s cut?

A: About 9%. Amazon takes 30% plus a delivery fee. Most vendors take 30%, but a few, like Smashwords, take significantly reduced fees. Smashwords and Patreon are the top vendors for how much comes to me.

Q: But how do I get books on Patreon?

A: You receive a bookfunnel link, and you have to sideload them into whatever ereader you use to read books. If bookfunnel isn’t your jam, there’s limited access to an ePub file.

Some technical abilities are required to use Patreon.

Q: What about audiobooks?

A: Siren+ tiers support my audiobooks, which are sold to the Patreon crowd (or given if a new release and you’re in the Cindercorns or Spicy Ponies with Bite tiers.) Audiobooks are expensive, and without Patreon, I probably would stop doing them because they don’t earn their keep back very well.

I do them for accessibility, not for profitability, but audiobooks would be the first thing to be dropped if I had to make a decision regarding being able to pay my rent.

(I’m altruistic until it hampers my ability to feed my family.)

Q: When will $book release?

A: When it releases. Sorry, I know that’s a harsh answer, but that’s the reality of the situation. I don’t have any dates outside of the next five books, and two of those are only if the rest of life goes well and I get enough writing done.

I refuse to kill myself over some books. I love writing, and it’s my job, but I am under zero obligation to do harm to myself mentally, physically, nor emotionally doing my job.

As such, here’s the upcoming release schedule:

• Death Dance by R.J. Blain, April 21, 2026
• Game On by G.P. Robbins, November 2026
• Winter Paradise by Susan Copperfield, December 2026.
• Tentative: Murder Floof by Bernadette Franklin, December 2026.
• Tentative: Failed Colony by R.J. Blain, December 2026.

If it’s not on this list, the answer is “When it releases.”

I understand you’d like books faster, but there is a human behind every single stage of the writing for my books, and humans are not machines, we’re certainly not infallible, and and good works take time to write.

I write, on average, 2,000 words a day. That’s a minimum of 50 business days just to draft the book. Then editorial needs to happen. I usually do 4-7 editorial passes on the book personally. I have two editors, and they have to do their passes on the book. It’s a long process.

I also do a lot of research for my books, and that also takes time.

So, if it’s not on the list above, I don’t know when it’s releasing. You can refer to this post for the Anthropic-reliant publication order.

Q: Who is your cover artist?

Rebecca Frank of Bewitching Book Covers is my cover designer for the vast majority of my books.

Q: Why so many pen names? You don’t need those!

A: Yes, actually, I do. Every time I release a book that isn’t a Mag Rom Com under the RJ Blain name, I lose readers. The darker the title or further away from being a Mag Rom Com it is, the more readers I lose.

Losing readers is losing money. Losing money means less wiggle room.

When I release books under other pen names, this doesn’t happen.

So yes, I absolutely DO need those. Readers, on a whole, are very picky creatures. And that is fine. Every time I release a pen name, I am doing it to appeal to a certain type of reader. There IS overlap in these pen names, yes! But every time I pen name, it’s a: public excepting my secret private pen name, which I have made accessible to everyone through my newsletter lists if anyone wants to follow that pen name.

But the readership drop is significant. When I put preorders up from other pen names alongside the RJ Blain ones? No problem.

If I have something other than a Mag Rom Com on RJ Blain? Problem.

Am I going to stop finishing the old RJ Blain stuff / my space operas? No.

But I acknowledge that the RJ Blain pen name is bleeding readers, and will continue to do so, because I did not segregate things earlier.

So, just because you would prefer if everything was under one pen name does not mean everyone else does.

I have a lot of readers who only read Susan Copperfield or GP Robbins OR RJ Blain (but Mag Rom Com only) OR RJ Blain (but Witch & Wolf World only) OR only Bernadette Franklin, etc.

This allows those readers to follow those authors on Amazon, Bookbub, etc, without ever having to worry about the “garbage” they dislike.

And yes, I’ve been told, to my face, that my other works are garbage because it’s not what they want to read.

That’s how this industry works.

And no… I’m not going to change this for the 1% of you who read everything. (And yes, that’s approximately the percentage of people who read everything. That’s not even a joke.)

Pen names allow me to keep writing–and it allows readers to match themselves with the right type of books for them.

Some people want dragons and unicorns that shit glitter and gemstones.

Some people want Satin.

Some people want cozy paranormal and science fiction slipstream.

Some people want gritty magical law enforcement flavored with dragons, carbunclo, and hummingbirds.

And that is fine.

My complete collection of works is like a buffet. There’s something for everyone, and not everyone will like everything.

I know my website isn’t complete yet, but I’m working on it as I have time, and once it is done, you’ll be able to figure out which pen name wrote which book you like of mine. But, if it makes you feel any better… those of you who do like everything are rare and wondrous.

Q: Will you be making any public appearances?

A: I do not know if there will be a signing, but I will be attending World Fantasy Con 2026 in Oakland, California. This is more of an industry convention, but if you’re a fantasy author and you want to come see me, that’s the place to do it.

As it’s 10 and I need to get a lot of work done, I’m going to get to it, but that covers the most common questions I’ve had recently. I’ve had more questions, but some of them, I just don’t have answers to quite yet, so they’re getting skipped (for now.)

I hope you all have a great day! I must now wrangle Death Dance because this book isn’t going to finish itself.