May 7, 2026
Pulitzer Prize Winning Biographer Jon Meacham and Copyright Scholar Paul Goldstein Headline AAP’s Annual Meeting
Distinguished Authors Speak to America’s 250th Birthday and the 50th Anniversary of the 1976 Copyright Act
On May 7th, the Association of American Publishers hosted its 2026 annual meeting celebrating the 250th birthday of the United States and the rich publishing tradition that has been central to the nation since its earliest days. Also front and center were the copyright principles that remain integral to incentivizing and protecting works of authorship and a vibrant modern industry today.
Leadership Remarks
In welcoming members and guests, President and CEO Maria A. Pallante said: “It is my pleasure to open this meeting, which we convene in the 250th year of the United States, on Zoom, which they most definitely did not have in 1776, although they did have —and deeply valued— authors, publishers, and innovators.” Ms. Pallante highlighted major inflection points of the past year, including a historic $1.5 billion dollar settlement pending against Anthropic; a suit by 13 AAP member companies in March against the notorious pirate site Anna’s Archive; and the class action suit filed earlier in the week by Elsevier, Cengage, Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, and author Scott Turow, against Meta and Mark Zuckerberg for industrial scale infringement and a trail of market harm from its Llama AI models. Observing that fair use is an equitable doctrine, Ms. Pallante said there is nothing equitable about what Meta has done. Additionally, she said it was time to revisit legislation that would block pirate sites from doing business in the United States, consistent with the laws of more than 50 countries.
Board Chair Tyrrell Mahoney, President of Chronicle Books, called it an honor to serve during such a momentous year. “I have experienced first-hand that this industry is strongest when working together to foster an enduring love of books,” she said. “Publishers were central to the founding of the country and are critical to its future; and we continue to honor and sustain that tradition because we believe in every generation of author, educator, and reader. Few enterprises have achieved such longevity and collective inventiveness.” She spoke eloquently about how “publishers helped build this country” by to the present day, “developing books for all ages and interests, alongside educational and scholarly works that span the limitless areas of human discovery and imagination.” In recognizing AAP’s Board and members, Chair Mahoney noted, “If the last 250 years show us anything, it is that publishing endures because it adapts…that is the work we celebrate today, and the commitment we carry forward together.”
Keynote Addresses
Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and historian Jon Meacham, who is also a scholar at Vanderbilt University, and distinguished copyright expert Paul Goldstein, a longtime professor at Stanford Law School, shared the keynoting honors before a virtual audience of nearly five hundred publishing professionals of all levels who tuned in to watch, with the numbers even higher given that many houses organized group watch events for the historic meeting.
Mr. Meacham is the prolific, award-winning author of numerous New York Times bestselling books, including American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography; And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle; and His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope. Speaking with his longtime editor Andy Ward, who is Executive Vice President and Publisher at Random House, Mr. Meacham drew on his latest book, American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union (Random House). In reflecting on the invaluable role of publishers in our nation’s founding, Mr. Meacham commented that “there would be no constitutional republic without the published written word.” He noted that publishers made available the arguments of revolutionaries for “eyes and ears” so they could reach “minds and hearts and lead to action.” He also spoke to the fact that there was no mythical prior moment in history where everything was great, and the publishing community is especially well positioned to craft a better future through the power of speech.
Mr. Goldstein, one of the nation’s foremost authorities on both domestic and international intellectual property law, spoke in conversation with Maria Pallante about the legacy of the 1976 Copyright Act on its 50th anniversary, including the people who drafted it, the courts that interpreted it, and the future legal landscape for copyright and AI. Mr. Goldstein is the author of twelve books including the influential five-volume legal treatise Goldstein on Copyright (Wolters Kluwer), and the acclaimed, general audience book Copyright’s Highway: From the Printing Press to the Cloud (Second Edition, Stanford University Press). His novel Havana Requiem: A Legal Thriller won the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. He reminded attendees that “we had copyright in this country before we had a constitution” and that publishing was at its center. He predicted that in the battle over copyright and AI, the future would feature licensing, and that markets flooded by generative AI material are a growing, serious problem. In closing, Mr. Goldstein poignantly noted that “people want authenticity…and only a publisher can guarantee authenticity.”
Distinguished Public Service Award
Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri received AAP’s Distinguished Public Service Award for his leadership on copyright policy and advocacy for authors and publishers against industrial scale copyright infringement by AI companies, which he has called “the largest intellectual property theft in American history.” The Award honors individuals who have made “outstanding contributions to the public good by advancing laws or policies that respect the value, creation, and publication of original works of authorship.”
A senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Hawley convened a watershed hearing in 2025 as Chair of the Crime and Counterterrorism Subcommittee, titled Too Big to Prosecute?: Examining the AI Industry’s Mass Ingestion of Copyrighted Works for AI Training. Brief video clips of the hearing, played during the annual meeting, are available here.
Sponsorships
AAP wishes to thank this year’s event sponsors Davis Wright Tremaine LLP; Industry Insights; and Total Compensation Solutions.
AAP | The Association of American Publishers represents the leading book, journal, and education publishers in the United States on matters of law and policy, advocating for outcomes that incentivize and protect works of authorship and the creative, intellectual, and financial investments that make them possible. As essential participants in local markets and the global economy, our members invest in and inspire the exchange of ideas, transforming the world we live in one word at a time. Find us online at www.publishers.org or on Twitter and Instagram at @AmericanPublish.