August 15, 2026, (Inside AI) — Secondhand booksellers across the UK and Ireland are fielding a surge of bulk orders from anonymous buyers, with many suspecting AI firms are behind the unusual purchases to acquire training data. The orders, which began arriving around May, are notable for their lack of thematic coherence and the premium prices paid.
Stuart Manley, co-owner of Barter Books in Alnwick, Northumberland, said the orders started three months ago and defy typical patterns. A recent request included an Estonian translation of John le Carré's The Mission Song, a specific imprint of Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey, and the October 1983 edition of Warship magazine. Manley has sold hundreds of random books to three buyers for about £4,000.
"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."
Jim Shaughnessy, owner of MW Books in Claregalway, Ireland, described the orders as sporadic and machine-driven, ranging from books on 18th-century African agricultural implements to biographies of 1950s racing car drivers. He said he doesn't see the right to dictate customer use, but finds the selections curious.
David Gower-Spence of BookLovers of Bath received about 200 book orders between May and July. One buyer, Canada-based Zoom Books, describes itself as North America's leading book recycling company and has been cited by multiple sellers. Zoom Books has been contacted for comment.
An anonymous UK bookseller said the buyers pay "top whack" without seeking discounts, and some orders from different buyers are delivered to the same address near Heathrow airport. The bookseller has received orders for 6,000 books since January, worth thousands of pounds, and called the activity disruptive to the trade.
"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."
The speculation follows a Washington Post investigation earlier this year revealing that Anthropic, developer of the Claude chatbot, spent tens of millions of dollars acquiring books, slicing off spines for scanning, then sending them for recycling. Anthropic stated that sourcing books is a widely used approach for training large language models across the AI industry.
"Claude is trained on a mix of publicly available web data, commercially acquired datasets, and data we generate ourselves. Sourcing books is a widely used approach for training large language models across the AI industry. None of our data acquisition programs buy and destroy rare or antiquarian books," Anthropic said.
Last month, tech news site 404 Media reported that a books database told sellers "the world's best AI training data is sitting on a shelf," noting books published before 2022 are ideal because their text is unpolluted by chatbot-generated material. The database, ISBNdb, said the webpage was a test of market interest and has been taken down.
Orders are typically placed through marketplaces including Biblio and Amazon-owned AbeBooks, both contacted for comment. Some booksellers question the AI theory, noting orders include public-domain titles like Gulliver's Travels from 1726, which are freely available online.
Why Random Books Appeal to AI Training Pipelines
Large language models require vast, diverse text to improve response generation. Secondhand books, many published decades before ChatGPT emerged and unavailable digitally, offer fresh data. The lack of thematic grouping may reflect a strategy to cover rare linguistic patterns and niche knowledge domains.
Manley offered a blunt assessment: "My theory is that it's masses and masses of AI money being squandered."
One forum post seen by the Guardian captured the sentiment: "Shame these are all destined for AI training, and will therefore get the covers stripped and ultimately end up being pulped."
Australian booksellers have reported similar bursts, with one saying the sudden demand was "driving me nuts." The pattern suggests a coordinated, global acquisition effort that remains opaque even to experienced sellers.
