Development comes after Anthropic was found to have spent millions on books to scan for ‘data acquisition’
Secondhand booksellers in the UK and Ireland are reporting a flurry of bulk orders from mystery buyers, amid speculation AI companies are acquiring the tomes for their data.
Bookshops contacted by the Guardian say they have been receiving orders from buyers in the US, Canada, continental Europe and the UK. The increase has been replicated around the world, with booksellers in the US, Australia and Europe also reporting unusual orders.
Stuart Manley, the co-owner of Barter Books in Alnwick, Northumberland, said the orders, which began arriving three months ago, were unusual because they did not follow the typical pattern of being grouped into themes such as sport or motoring.
“It’s definitely a strange combination of books,” said Manley. “Normally a book order is on a theme but this is all over the place.”
A recent order included requests for an Estonian translation of John le Carré’s The Mission Song, a copy of Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey from a specific imprint and the October 1983 edition of Warship, a monthly magazine. Manley said he had sold “hundreds” of random books to three buyers for a total of about £4,000.
Jim Shaughnessy, the owner of MW Books in Claregalway, Ireland, said his business had been receiving large, varied orders since May.
“They are sporadic, presumably machine-driven and have little in terms of thematic currency; books on agricultural implements in 18th century Africa through to biographies of 1950s racing car drivers,” he said. “Personally, I don’t see we have the right to dictate what any customer does with their purchases but it is more than curious to see what’s being selected.”
David Gower-Spence, the owner of BookLovers of Bath, said he had received a rush of orders between May and July for about 200 books from buyers who have also been cited by other sellers contacted by the Guardian for this article.
One, the Canada-based Zoom Books, which has featured in other media reports, describes itself as “North America’s leading book recycling company”. Zoom has been contacted for comment by the Guardian.
“It was overwhelming for a while and I’m relatively well organised,” said Gower-Spence.
One UK-based secondhand bookseller, speaking on condition of anonymity, said some random orders could come from different buyers but be delivered to the same address. “The aliases behind these orders are very opaque even to experienced booksellers,” the source said.
One delivery postcode seen by the Guardian and used by different buyers points to a group of freight warehouses near Heathrow airport.
The bookseller, who has received orders for 6,000 books from similar buyers since January worth thousands of pounds, said the buyers were paying “top whack” and were not seeking a discount despite requesting titles in bulk.
“It’s disrupting the secondhand bookselling business because this isn’t typical for the trade,” the bookseller said. “It appears to be either a human or a machine dipping into the sandbox of secondhand books and what they are buying makes no sense in terms of the wider trends in the market.”
