{
  "id": 9586431,
  "title": "A Bookseller Confronts a Mysterious Company Hunting His Rarest Books",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/24/a-bookseller-confronts-a-mysterious-company-hunting-his-rarest-books",
  "topic": "culture",
  "section": "Culture",
  "published": "2026-09-24T16:20:52.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Mother Jones",
    "slug": "mother-jones",
    "url": "https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/09/ai-books-destructive-scanning-blue-angel-chris-burden/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "A rare bookseller in Kentucky is grappling with a series of mysterious emails requesting large, odd orders of his most unique and hard-to-find titles. Brandon Thomas DiSabatino, the owner of Conveyor Belt Books, received two such emails each containing a spreadsheet detailing seemingly random requests for books that didn't appear to be related. One of the books in question was a self-published work by the conceptual artist Chris Burden, which is exceedingly hard to find. DiSabatino received a similar request from another company and had previously received an unusual offer from a third company offering to buy his entire inventory.\n\nThe emails included a spreadsheet attached, each with orders for rare books that didn't make sense, with no thematic connections. DiSabatino also noticed that the name of the company making the purchases, Blue Angel, did not seem real, and the website they advertised had little to do with rare books. The company's website boasted about selling \"high-quality industrial supplies\" and showcased photos of things like steel drums, modular offices, gravel, a Jeep Wrangler, and trout eggs.\n\nDiSabatino was concerned that Blue Angel might be trying to buy his books for an ulterior, sinister purpose, such as feeding them into computers to train large language AI models, a practice that has become increasingly common as companies seek to train these models by buying rare books and destroying the originals. This situation has made many booksellers question their reality, reminiscent of a 2023 novel called Forget I Told You This by Hilary Zaid, where a mysterious company called Q buys and consumes novels.",
  "summary": "Brandon Thomas DiSabatino is used to receiving unusual emails. DiSabatino is a poet, author, playwright, and the owner of Conveyor Belt Books, a rare and eclectic books dealer in Covington, Kentucky. A certain amount of strange correspondence is inherent in the business. But over the last two months, he has received two emails that stood […]",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}