AI & Publishing
Authors Guild AI Best Practices: A Guide for Publishers
Implement the Authors Guild’s October 2026 AI guidance with manuscript screening, author consent, confidentiality controls, a sample policy, and a review checklist.
Independent publishing reference
Publishing Standards
Standards, practices, and intelligence for professional publishing.
Independent guidance on publishing standards, copyright, ISBNs, metadata, book production, distribution, AI, and professional publishing practice.
Publishing Standards Brief
The Publishing Standards Brief - Edition 005: 2027 Publisher Readiness
October 31 edition covering ISBNs, DOI fee planning, metadata quality, accessibility, print production, and rights.
Reference Library
Current Standards & Guides
Practical guidance for the legal, editorial, technical, production, and distribution systems behind a professionally published book.
Distribution & Metadata
EPUB 3.4: What Publishers Should Change, Validate, and Leave Alone
Understand the EPUB 3.4 draft, test new features, validate with EPUBCheck 5.4.0, and decide what to change or preserve in existing ebooks.
Distribution & Metadata
EPUB Annotations 1.0: What Publishers Should Prepare for Now
W3C published a new EPUB Annotations 1.0 Working Draft on September 24, 2026. Publishers should preserve stable structure, identifiers, privacy expectations, and edition relationships before annotations become portable across reading systems.
Author & Publisher Business
KDP Preorders Can Now Run 18 Months: The Publisher Release-Calendar Standard
KDP now allows Kindle eBook preorders up to 18 months in advance for preorders created on or after September 2, 2026. Use a release-control record to avoid long-range metadata and production errors.
Copyright & Rights
Anthropic Settlement Claims: The Publisher Rightsholder Allocation Standard
Anthropic settlement allocation disputes show why publishers need a title-level record for legal owners, beneficial owners, reversions, contracts, claim percentages, and payment decisions.
Distribution & Metadata
Google Search Profiles for Publishers: The Multi-Brand Claiming Standard
Google expanded Search profiles to more U.S. publishers and added multi-account management. Use this claiming, evidence, and governance standard before rolling it across a publishing network.
Distribution & Metadata
EPUB Accessibility 1.2: The Publisher Release Checklist
W3C issued a September 2026 draft of EPUB Accessibility 1.2. Use this release gate for content, conformance, metadata, evaluation, and reader support.
AI & Publishing
AI Content Disclosure: A Practical Publishing Standard for 2026
EU AI transparency rules are now applicable. Adopt a practical classification, review, labeling, and recordkeeping standard for AI-assisted publishing.
Copyright & Rights
AI Training, Piracy, and the Publisher Rights-Provenance Standard
The Anthropic litigation separates AI training questions from pirated acquisition. Build the rights-provenance record authors and publishers need now.