Understanding and applying the Authors Guild recommended AI clauses in publishing contracts

If you’re an author, your publisher is your partner, at least in theory. But publishers have a tendency to assert control over any rights associated with your book, including clauses that give them control over “any and all digital formats” that may arise. Given the potential value of AI-related rights, this is unacceptable.

At this fraught moment, the Authors Guild has weighed in with a collection of model contract clauses for authors. I’ve reviewed these and found them excellent. I enthusiastically recommend that you and your publishing lawyer review the detailed model clauses, which are listed here.

If you’re on the verge of a publishing deal — and especially if you’ve chosen a traditional publisher after competitive bidding — you’re probably excited to close the deal. But these details matter. Regardless of language from your publisher that suggests that “these are standard terms and we never change them,” they are likely to open to negotiation. They want your book. Don’t be afraid to request that your acquisitions editor and agent pressure the publisher’s legal department to be more flexible. Consider that many other authors are in the same situation, and you’re not the only one attempting to negotiate these clauses right now. (There’s a reason that the Authors Guild published these terms now: To give ammunition to all the authors currently in the midst of these negotiations.)

One more note before we get to the details. Hybrid publishers are far more focused on serving the needs of authors: That’s what you’re paying them for. They’re likely to be a lot more flexible on AI licensing issues. If you’re working with a hybrid, you’ll likely find them more open to including these clauses. In fact, my advice to hybrid publishers is to include these clauses by default, to signal that they’re on the side of helping authors to appropriately control the AI uses of their intellectual property.

The master clause, asserting author control over rights

This should be in every publishing contract.

No Generative AI (AI) Rights Granted Unless Expressly Provided

For avoidance of doubt, except as expressly provided for in this Agreement, Author reserves the rights, and Publisher acquires no rights to, reproduce, distribute and/or otherwise use or create derivative works of the Work, or to sublicense any of the foregoing, for purposes of training generative artificial intelligence technologies (AI) or for use in any AI outputs; provided that Publisher may use the Work without the Author’s consent or approval in connection with internal AI-powered tools and technologies utilized in the normal course of Publisher’s internal operations (including but not limited to improving the marketing, advertising, and searchability of the Work).

This is the antidote to the publisher rights grab. It’s what enables you to negotiate all the other AI-related rights in detail.

AI uses as subsidiary rights

Publishing contracts typically include terms for subsidiary rights. This is how publishers and authors partner on ebooks, audiobooks, licensed excerpts, and translations. AI has the potential to create all sorts of new revenue-generating book related products. For example, the vendor Soqratic is currently turning authors’ books into revenue-generating virtual personas or chatbots, and I think this format will shortly take its place as a standard form of content alongside ebooks and audiobooks.

Given this shift, it’s insane for an author to just give away the right to create licensed AI content from their book. You should be able to make money from your content with AI. And if you’re totally opposed to AI, you should have the right to block any such use by the publisher.

Here’s what the Authors Guild says about this clause:

This clause segregates AI rights into the following sub-rights categories: (1) AI Training, which involves selling the rights to ingest the book to train a model (such as an LLM); (2) RAG Summary (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), which involves licensing the book for systems that query the text to provide summaries or answers (e.g., “chat with this book”); and (3) other uses that allow users to interact with a book for personal/non-commercial use.

(Note that RAG is a method for generating AI systems that are built exclusively on the book’s content, exactly as Soqratic does.)

Here’s what the Authors Guild recommends for this clause, with my commentary.

AI Subsidiary Rights Granted

Publisher acquires no rights to use or license the Work for any AI-related use except as expressly authorized herein. For avoidance of doubt, any right to use the Work to train AI or in connection with any AI-related function that is not listed here or that is crossed out is not granted.

This preamble is essential, since it asserts that the publisher doesn’t get to just assert a default right for new formats that haven’t been explicitly described in the contract.

*If Author is granting all AI rights on a non-exclusive basis, include:
Notwithstanding any other provision of this Agreement, Publisher shall have only a non-exclusive right to enter into licenses for the following AI rights.

**If Author is granting some AI rights on a non-exclusive basis and some on an exclusive basis, include the following and note specific “exclusive” or “non-exclusive” after each right:
Notwithstanding any other provision of this Agreement, the grant of AI rights under this Section will be either exclusive or non-exclusive on a right-by-right basis, as designated in the table below, except if an AI right lacks an express and specific designation, such right shall be deemed non-exclusive.

These clauses are essential in preserving your right as author to pursue these formats on your own. It’s your content, you should be able to monetize it. Be especially wary of academic publishers, since they’re the ones most likely to just assert rights over everything they can imagine as well as whatever they can’t yet imagine that might come along in the future.

You may also include:
Publisher shall not enter into any exclusive license agreements for the following without obtaining Author’s prior written approval.

***If Author wants ability to approve each deal, include:
Publisher shall obtain Author’s prior written consent before granting sublicenses for any of the following rights, which shall not be unreasonably delayed. Publisher shall give Author at least fifteen (15) business days written notice of the terms of any proposed license.

Are there deals you’d rather avoid? Maybe you’d prefer to avoid licensing to Elon Musk’s xAI or Meta, for example. This is how you can assert those preferences.

****For AI licensing income to flow to the authors and not be applied against the advance, include:
Notwithstanding anything to the contrary to this agreement, all licensing revenues or other sums due under this section shall be paid to the Author within thirty (30) days of receipt by the Publisher. Such revenues shall be paid in full to the Author independently of any advance due paid under this Agreement; the Publisher shall not retain such sums to offset the unearned portion of an advance, nor shall such sums be cross collateralized with any other earnings under this Agreement.

This makes a big difference. If the publisher gets paid, you want to get paid soon after — not just have this revenue accounted for against your advance.

Here’s what the Authors Guild suggests regarding revenue sharing for these formats:

The splits agreed upon for each use should ideally reflect the level of the publisher’s involvement and work and are subject to individual negotiation.

The below splits are merely suggestive, with the 50/50 splits used where the rights are akin to current permissioned uses, and the 80-90/10-20 splits to rights where the publisher is acting more as a licensing agent.

AI Rights	Author’s Share	Publisher’s Share
AI Training- Only (licensing the Work for use in training machine learning models, LLMs, or AI systems)	80-90%	10-20%
RAG (licensing the Work for Retrieval-Augmented Generation)	50%	50%
AI Summary of Book – personal end user use only/no commercial use	50%	50%
AI Enhance Book/ Chat with a Book – personal end-user use only/no commercial use	50%	50%
Chat with Character – personal end-user use only/no commercial use	80-90%	10-20%
Fan fiction generation – personal end-user use only/no commercial use	80-90%	10-20%
Chat with several of authors books – personal end-user use only/no commercial use	80-90%	10-20%

Regrettably, now that the Author’s Guild has published this, it’s likely to become a benchmark. I think the RAG licensing, AI Summary, and AI Enhance/Book Chat splits are off — the author should be receiving more like 80% of the revenues from those formats.

Audiobooks and translations

The Authors Guild suggests this language:

Audiobook Clause (For Use with Audiobook Grants)

With respect to any audiobook created or distributed under this Agreement, Publisher shall not permit or cause the Work to be narrated by AI or other non-human narrator, without Author’s prior and express written consent; provided that Publisher may use AI to make corrections or for other non-substantial uses in the narration.

Translation Clause (For Use with Grants of Translation Rights)

With respect to any translations created or distributed under this Agreement, Publisher shall not translate or permit or cause the Work to be translated into another language with AI or other non-human translator, without Author’s prior and express written consent. For purposes of clarification, a human translator may use AI as a tool to assist in the translation, provided that the translation substantially comprises human creation and the human translator has control over, and reviews and approves, each word in the translation.

AI-generated audio and translations may be crappy. If that worries you, be sure to include these clauses in your contract.

Author’s Use of AI

Some publishers, like Wiley, are now requiring that authors disclose all use of AI. This is an absurd requirement, like requiring that authors report all uses of word processors and web search.

The Authors Guild suggests substituting a far more reasonable standard:

Author’s Use of AI

Author shall not be required to use generative AI or to work from AI-generated text. Author shall disclose to Publisher if any AI-generated text is included in the submitted manuscript, and may not include more than [a de minimis/5%] AI-generated text.

This is reasonable because AI-generated text is not eligible for copyright protection and also because, as prose, it tends to be boring and tedious.

Publisher’s Use of AI

It’s one of the ironies of modern publishing that even as publishers become paranoid about authors’ use of AI, they’re using it themselves. A survey from 2025 found 48% of publishing organizations using AI, and it’s doubtless become more prevalent since then.

If you’re worried that publishers are uploading your book to ChatGPT where it could be used for training purposes, that’s a rational fear. I can also tell you from personal experience that some publishers are using AI tools for summaries or copy editing, and the results tend to be poor.

So I endorse the Authors Guild’s clauses regarding publishers’ use of AI:

Publisher shall not upload the Work or any of Author’s personal information to consumer-facing AI systems for purposes such as generating summaries, assessments, or marketing copy without written permission from the author or as otherwise agreed to hereunder; and when such permission is granted, it shall ensure that the manuscript is not used by third-party AI companies for training, such as by opting out of allowing training in user settings.

Publisher agrees and warrants that it will not use AI to substantially edit a manuscript (excepting the use of basic spelling and grammar-checking applications).

There’s some paranoia about AI editing; when the book Shy Girl was withdrawn from publication, the author Mia Ballard suggested that the AI-generated text was inserted by an acquiantance acting as her editor. It’s certainly reasonable to insist that publishers don’t use AI for editing purposes.

You won’t get everything you ask for

Publishers are under stress right now. They’re not going to be excited about the effort of negotiating AI in contracts, nor about giving up AI rights.

That’s no reason to give up and give in.

The Authors Guild is telling you not to back down and giving you the tools to assert your rights.

Use them.