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

Secondhand book sales have seen a surge in recent months, with independent booksellers reporting massive orders of novels being shipped to warehouses around the world. Stuart Manley, a bookseller from Barter Books in Northumberland, has never witnessed such bulk orders during his 30-year career in the second-hand book trade. Many booksellers across the globe are experiencing similar phenomena, but they are unsure of the ultimate destination for these books.

Speculation suggests that the orders are not for avid overseas readers, but rather for AI training. This idea gained traction after a court ruling in the US in 2025, which deemed using books to train AI software did not violate copyright laws. The decision, made by Judge William Alsup in a lawsuit against AI firm Anthropic, allowed the company to use the authors' books for training its AI chatbot, Claude.

Books were reportedly being destroyed during the process, leading to unease among booksellers. David Tobin, owner of Walden Books in north London, expressed sadness at the prospect of rare or antiquarian books being destroyed while selling titles that haven't been sold for years. The court documents revealed Anthropic's internal project, dubbed "Project Panama," aimed to "destructively scan all the books in the world."

The diverse subject matter of the sold books, ranging from obscure Latin texts to cowboy novels, further supports the hypothesis that AI is the driving force behind the secondhand book sales boom. Experts argue that unusual and rare texts could provide fresh material to enhance the training of large language models, the technology behind generative AI tools like chatbots.

However, the destruction of books raises concerns among booksellers and intellectual property specialists, who emphasize the importance of respecting copyright laws and preserving rare editions.