AI firms suspected of driving surge in random bulk purchases from UK and Irish used-book stores

Independent secondhand retailers across the UK and Ireland are confronting an unusual influx of large, thematically incoherent bulk orders from mystery purchasers in North America, continental Europe and other regions. Shop owners including Stuart Manley of Barter Books, Jim Shaughnessy of MW Books and David Gower-Spence of BookLovers of Bath describe sales of hundreds of random titles totalling several thousand pounds, with some orders directed to a single postcode of freight warehouses near Heathrow.

One buyer, the Canada-based Zoom Books, markets itself as a book-recycling company and has been cited by multiple sellers. While the buyers pay full price and do not request discounts, the erratic selections—ranging from 18th-century African agricultural manuals to mid-20th-century racing driver biographies—have led booksellers to suspect AI firms are acquiring the volumes to digitise and train large language models. Reports of similar spikes in the United States, Australia and Europe reinforce the theory that the AI industry is hunting for pre-digital texts that are not readily available online. The practice raises concerns about the future of rare and antiquarian books, which may be stripped of covers and pulped after scanning.