Secondhand book sales are booming—AI firms may be the buyers

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

Independent booksellers in the UK and elsewhere are seeing bulk orders of thousands of books—ranging from obscure Latin texts to cowboy novels—shipped to distant warehouses. The likely buyer: AI companies. A 2025 US court ruling found Anthropic’s use of secondhand books to train Claude did not violate copyright. Unsealed documents revealed an internal project called “Project Panama” aimed at “destructively scanning all the books in the world”—removing spines for high-speed scanning, then recycling the remains. Anthropic says sourcing books for training is standard industry practice and denies buying and destroying rare or antiquarian titles. UK copyright law is stricter: copying for training generally requires the rightsholder’s permission. Booksellers welcome the sales but are uneasy about the books being pulped.

Why it matters: BBC investigative piece with a named internal project, court precedent, and firsthand bookseller accounts — high signal density. Held below 85 because it's a trend report rather than a same-day hard news break.