Companies / Publisher
HarperCollins
HarperCollins in the AI training data market. Recorded here: 1 disclosed licensing deal and 3 public prices.
harpercollins.comLatest record 15 Apr 2025
licensing deals
Public prices involving HarperCollins
- HarperCollins AI training licence fee actually paid to one author for one nonfiction backlist title (Writing Without Bullshit, 2016): three-year opt-in licence, author signed and received a cheque about a month later
First-hand account by the payee that the money was paid: he signed and a month or so later received the cheque (shown as an image on the page). It confirms one author was paid, not how many authors opted in or were paid. The buyer is not named by HarperCollins; Bernoff calls it 'this AI company (likely Microsoft)', so Microsoft is his inference. The programme is the one already held as an offer (harpercollins-microsoft-author-share-per-title) and as the gross (book-title); this is the realised payment.
The payer's own page, Josh Bernoff, Why I took the $2,500 check to license my book for AI (bernoff.com; withoutbullshit.com redirects to it)
$2,500per title (author's share of the per-title fee, before the agent's 15%)
- Author's half of HarperCollins' per-title AI training fee (select nonfiction backlist, three-year licence, buyer reported as Microsoft)
What the author receives: the publisher keeps the other $2,500. Opt-in; outputs capped at 200 consecutive words or 5% of a book. The $5,000 gross is already on the board as book-title.
Press report, The Decoder, Microsoft offers authors $5,000 to train AI on their books
$2,500 per bookper book (author's share of $5,000)
- One nonfiction book title, licensed for training for three years (HarperCollins)
A signed deal between HarperCollins and an AI company reported as Microsoft, paid for each backlist title whose author opts in, split equally between author and publisher. Agents called it a one-off done by contract addenda.
Press report, Publishers Weekly
$5,000 per titleper title
Licensing deals
- Nov 2024HarperCollins to MicrosoftNot disclosed
Training
In the same deals and cases
Cite this
AIData.Broker, “HarperCollins in the AI training data market”, reviewed 15 Apr 2025. https://aidata.markets/companies/harpercollins
Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 if you credit AIData.Broker and link to this page. Each row names the publication that stated it, and words quoted from a source keep that source's own terms.