Secondhand Book Sales Surge Amidst AI Training Speculation

In recent months, a peculiar surge in the sales of old and secondhand books has been observed in various parts of the world. Independent booksellers report receiving wholesale orders in significantly larger quantities than what ordinary readers typically purchase. Intriguingly, even when these books are dispatched to distant warehouses across the globe, their ultimate destination and usage remain unclear. Stuart Manley of Barter Books in Northumberland, Northern England, usually sells two to three thousand books a week. However, a single wholesale order from a Canadian company recently required him to ship the equivalent of a week's sales in just seven days. Manley, who has spent 30 years in the secondhand book trade, states he has never witnessed such an event before. Manley's experience is not isolated. Booksellers in various countries are reporting similarly unusual, large-volume orders, without certainty about who is buying or the final destination. However, a strong suspicion has emerged: these books might not be for avid human readers but are being used for training artificial intelligence (AI). AI Training and Book Court Disputes The surge in secondhand book sales is linked to the rapid expansion of AI, further supported by a significant ruling in a US court. In 2025, a US judge ruled that using books purchased in this manner to train AI software does not violate US copyright law. This decision was the outcome of a lawsuit filed by three authors against the AI company Anthropic. Judge William Alsup deemed Anthropic's use of the authors' books as 'exceedingly transformative,' permitting it under US law. Court documents later revealed that books were destroyed during the training of the AI chatbot Claude. Anthropic states that Claude is trained on publicly available web content, commercially purchased datasets, and data produced by the company itself. The company also mentioned that collecting books for AI training is a widespread practice in the AI industry. However, it clarified that its data acquisition program does not involve purchasing and destroying rare or ancient books. Nevertheless, the fact that books are destroyed during AI training has raised concerns among booksellers, authors, and cultural heritage preservationists. David Tobin, who runs Walden Books in London, has also experienced unusual sales recently. While he finds it positive that some books unsold for years are now selling, he expresses sadness if they are ultimately destroyed. What is 'Destructive Scanning'? Court documents related to Anthropic revealed an internal company project codenamed 'Project Panama,' which involved digitizing old books. According to the documents, the project's objective was to digitize books globally through a process called 'destructive scanning.' In destructive scanning, books are sent to a facility where industrial-scale digital copies are made. The book's spine or binding is removed, and each page is scanned at high speed. The remaining paper is typically reused or recycled. Manley of Barter Books notes that while the name 'Project Panama' is new to him, the actual process has been discussed among booksellers for a long time, with similar activities being discussed on online forums. However, Manley cannot confirm if the books he sold were purchased for this project or for another AI company's initiative. The issue is that the orders appear highly irregular, with no clear pattern of which books are bought. Sometimes rare Latin books are purchased, while at other times, common literary works like romance novels are bought in large quantities. Experts argue that this diversity points towards potential AI involvement. Training large language models with new and diverse content can expand their knowledge and linguistic capabilities. Books that are rare, old, or not easily available online can become new sources for AI. The Question of Copyright However, the legality of purchasing books for AI training is not uniform across all countries. According to Professor Emily Hudson, an intellectual property law expert at Oxford University, UK law differs from that of the US. She explains that in the UK, obtaining permission from the copyright holder is generally required for activities such as creating copies of books for AI training, building libraries for training, and training models with that content. This can pose a significant legal challenge for AI companies. Even when using the same technology and data, the legal status can vary between the US and the UK. With the development of AI, a fundamental question is arising globally: to what extent can books, articles, images, and other intellectual content created by humans be used for AI training? If a company purchases books from the market, it acquires physical ownership of those books. However, whether this automatically grants the right to scan them into digital data and train AI models remains a contentious issue. Ethical Questions on Book Destruction Practices For booksellers, the problem is not limited to legalities. Books themselves are cultural heritage. Therefore, the practice of cutting, scanning, and subsequently destroying books for AI training raises serious ethical questions. According to Derek Walker, owner of McNaughton's Books in Edinburgh, if only 100 copies of an academic book were published and 75 are already in libraries, the destruction of one remaining copy in the market might seem to have limited impact. However, history also shows the opposite. A single surviving copy of an 18th-century edition of a book might exist in the world. Such a book could have been preserved for decades or centuries. If one such last copy is purchased for AI training and destroyed, it's not just the loss of one book; it's the disappearance of a rare document of human history. Therefore, booksellers do not entirely reject the use of books for AI. Their concerns primarily relate to transparency regarding which books are bought, where they go, and what ultimately happens to them. Why Millions of Copies of 'The Da Vinci Code' Are Needed? Manley, however, does not view the book recycling process negatively in all circumstances. He believes there are many books that have not sold for years and are out of reader demand. Reusing such books can be beneficial for the book business. He cites Dan Brown's popular novel 'The Da Vinci Code,' arguing that the world doesn't need an additional five hundred thousand copies. He mentions that some books he listed online for sale for 20 years remained unsold, but now there's a sudden demand for such old books. This also creates business opportunities for secondhand booksellers, with books that have long been stored in warehouses or shops suddenly selling in large quantities. However, if the reason for increased business is the collection and destruction of books for AI, it also brings a new dimension to the debate about the cultural value of books. The Future of Books in the AI Era It has not yet been fully proven that the unusual surge in secondhand book sales is indeed due to AI. While there appears to be a connection between the unusual wholesale orders seen by booksellers and the past large-scale book acquisitions by AI companies, the final use of every order has not been confirmed. However, this phenomenon has highlighted a serious reality associated with AI development: the more knowledge and diverse content AI is trained on, the greater the need for human creations and published materials. When content readily available in the digital world is insufficient, even old, rare, and hard-to-find books can become valuable to AI companies. This could transform the book market in the future. An old book, seemingly worthless to readers, could become important data for AI companies. On the other hand, if original books are destroyed to create digital copies, the preservation of rare books and cultural heritage could be questioned. Therefore, the debate is no longer limited to 'Can AI read books?' Another question arises: how can the physical source of original knowledge be preserved when AI utilizes human knowledge?