Secondhand book sales are booming. Is it because of AI?

Something mysterious has been unfolding in the secondhand book market. Over the past few months independent booksellers have noticed an unusual pattern of purchases, with scores of novels being shipped to distant warehouses. In a typical week Stuart Manley, from Barter Books in Northumberland, would sell two or three thousand books. But a single bulk order from a Canadian institution recently matched what he would expect to move in seven days. He says he has "never seen the similar of this aft 30 years successful the second-hand publication trade". Manley is not alone. Booksellers around the world have reported similarly large mega‑orders. They are unsure of the final destination for the volumes, but suspect the books are not being bought for eager overseas readers. Instead, the suspicion is that they are being acquired for something else with a voracious appetite for fresh information: AI. ### The court battle over books The idea that the surge in secondhand sales is being driven by the explosive growth of AI can be traced to a ruling in the United States. In 2025 a judge ruled that using books purchased in this manner to train AI models did not violate US copyright law. The decision came from a lawsuit brought against AI steadfast Anthropic by three authors. In his ruling Judge William Alsup said Anthropic's usage of the authors' books was "exceedingly transformative" and truthfully allowed nether US law. When the court documents were unsealed last period it also emerged that books were being destroyed in the process of training Anthropic's AI chatbot, Claude. A spokesperson said, "Claude is trained connected a premix of publically disposable web data, commercially acquired datasets, and information we make ourselves." They insisted that sourcing books for training was a widely used approach across the AI industry. "None of our information acquisition programs bargain and destruct uncommon or antiquarian books," they added. Nonetheless, the notion that books are being pulped has caused unease. David Tobin, who runs Walden Books in north London, has also experienced atypical sales. "In immoderate ways it's precise bully to merchantability immoderate of these titles which haven't been sold for galore years, but it would beryllium bittersweet if they are yet destroyed," he says. The court documents relating to the Anthropic lawsuit revealed that the task of ingesting old books was referred to in internal company communications as "Project Panama". The documents indicated the company's purpose was to "destructively scan each the books successful the world". Destructive scanning involves shipping books to locations where they can be digitised at an industrial scale, removing the spine so each page can be scanned rapidly, and then recycling the remains. "A batch of enigma surrounds Project Panama," Manley from Barter Books says. "The sanction is caller to me, but the world of the task is not, and has been the taxable of overmuch treatment connected the bookseller forums." He does not know whether his books are being bought for it or similar projects by other AI firms. But he says it is also hard to account for the sales, which appear random with "no rhyme oregon reason." They have varied from obscure Latin texts to cowboy novels. Experts note that the diverse subject matter also points to AI, as unusual and rare texts could provide fresh material to improve the training of large language models, the technology that underpins generative AI tools such as chatbots. Professor Emily Hudson, intelligence spot specialist at Oxford University, says copyright laws in the UK differ from those in the US. "The starting constituent successful the UK is that each these acts of copying - creating the grooming room and doing the grooming – necessitate the support of the copyright owner," she says. For booksellers the situation poses a dilemma. They are uncomfortable with the idea of books being destroyed, even if they acknowledge that not every title needs to be saved. "A caller world substance published successful lone 100 copies, 75 of which are already successful libraries, whitethorn beryllium precise uncommon connected the marketplace - but it is possibly not specified a large nonaccomplishment if 1 transcript is destroyed," says Derek Walker, proprietor of Edinburgh bookshop McNaughtan's. "But we have, and person sold, books which are for illustration the lone known surviving illustration of an variation from the 18th century." "It would beryllium a overmuch much important occupation if 1 similar that were to beryllium bought for destruction, having survived this long." Manley adds that recycling books is a sensible solution for many titles that the public no longer wants on their shelves, especially when it comes with a boost in trade. "Some whitethorn person ethical concerns astir wherever the books extremity up and if they're destroyed," he says. "But the satellite nary longer needs 5 cardinal copies of The Da Vinci Code." "I've had books advertised for 20 years connected the web which haven't sold until now."