Bookseller says the viral “AI companies buying rare books” story overstates the case

rkulidzan · x · 2026-07-28

A second-generation bookseller says the viral story about AI companies buying up “rare books” doesn’t hold up in practice.
His store saw a bizarre 70-book order that briefly forced them to pause online sales, but when he dug into the orders, most of the books were obscure, out-of-print items like old manuals rather than precious collector’s books.
He argues the viral reports mix together real facts — ISBNdb’s AI-book sourcing pitch, Anthropic’s book-scanning litigation, and strange bulk orders — but overstate how much truly rare inventory is being sucked into the pipeline.

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