AI companies suspected of driving secondhand book sales boom

Independent secondhand booksellers in the UK, Ireland, and elsewhere are reporting an unprecedented surge in bulk orders. These unusual purchases often consist of large quantities of books across unrelated subjects, which has led many dealers to suspect that artificial intelligence companies are the buyers.

Court documents and investigative reports suggest that AI firms, such as Anthropic, are acquiring massive amounts of physical books to obtain high-quality, human-written text for training large language models. A key concern is the practice of ‘destructive scanning,’ where physical books are scanned and then destroyed to ensure that only one digital copy exists, thereby avoiding copyright infringement under ‘fair use’ doctrines. This process is reportedly part of initiatives like ‘Project Panama.’

While the sales boom provides a financial windfall for some booksellers, many express concern over the loss of physical copies, particularly regarding rare or historically significant works. A 2025 US court ruling involving Anthropic found that using such books for AI training was ‘exceedingly transformative’ and did not violate copyright law, providing a legal framework for these large-scale data acquisition programs.