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Secondhand book sales are booming. Is it because of AI?
- throwaway27448 2mo agoBooks are seemingly more expensive than ever but paradoxically declining in material and substantial quality (i.e., are poorly edited and printed). Buying used books is just good financial sense.
- functionmouse 2mo agoWe're no longer an economy that produces things to be consumed, but rather one that produces things that increase consumption. Could be the makings of a dark age.
- mschild 2mo agoExactly this. I'm not entirely certain AI has anything to do with it but my last book purchases have been entirely used. Our local independent book shop got together with a couple other dozen and started a used book platform. If I have a book I don't want, I'll let them know, if they have a buyer, I just bring it to them and get a small amount of money. They take a fee for the handling and everyone's happy. A used book is usually max half the price of new and there is a decently wide selection. A lot of online retailers have also started stocking used books as a cheaper alternative.
- Zigurd 2mo agoI don't know about globally but in the US anything that isn't sure to be a mass market item is going to be print on demand. While there's some perfectly good print on demand out there, it's often of lower quality than conventional printing.
- infecto 2mo agoIs that really the case? Anecdotally but I remember new releases cost more historically.
- throwaway27448 2mo agoThis phenomenon is hardly exclusive to new releases.
- infecto 2mo agoAgain I have not seen it. I am sure in certain niches used book prices have gone up as almost all second hand items have with resellers and the internet. But I have been buying used books for decades and they are as cheap as ever. so what phenomenon are you experiencing?
- throwaway27448 2mo agoI'm saying that even public domain books are pricier yet lower quality for the price than ever. As others have pointed out, the mass market paperback has vanished from non-used bookstores. I suspect I misunderstood you and by "new releases" you are referring to non-used books. Yes, the entire point is that they are too expensive to justify purchasing.
- infecto 2mo agoSorry the data says otherwise. Books are cheaper than ever
- derf_ 2mo agoMy preferred book format is also the mass-market paperback, which the current publishing industry has decided should no longer exist, probably because they found they could not charge over $20 for them. I can also find decades' worth of quality books for prices that sometimes drop below $1 (though popular / rare books are frequently sold for more than their original asking price now, but inflation-adjusted, that is still a good deal, and much less than a new book). There is no reason to expect that just because something was just published recently that it is worth many multiples the cost of an older book. I will still buy new books to support authors I particularly like, but as prices keep going up, I find I am becoming more and more selective. And finally, physical books do not spy on me or show me ads, or otherwise try to coerce me into an abusive relationship, like every other form of entertainment seems to attempt to do these days.
- Zigurd 2mo agoYes it is probably due to AI training. The clue is that it's bulk orders driving the increase. The annoying thing about the article is the hand wringing. If anything this is the least dubious way to acquire training material. They are paying the correct party to get that material. AI training is at least as transformative as throwing the words into an inverted index for web search. One thing this demonstrates is that there's still training material to be mined that's original, and high enough quality to have been published on paper. This source of material won't get mined out until all the similar material originally written in major foreign languages get scanned and translated for training purposes. We are in the gentle slopes of the lower foothills of the never gonna be AGI so I'll call it singularity.
- EA0707 2mo agoThe issue people have with it isn't about copyright. It's about how offensive it is that AI companies are mass buying and then destroying physical books by the millions. It's the same reason people were outraged when those two fools chopped down the ancient Sycamore tree at Hadrian's Wall. "But it's just a tree!" No, it isn't. It's much, much more than that. There is something inherently revolting about pulping billions of pages of literature. Whether they paid people for the books is completely besides the point.
- Zigurd 2mo agoAs the author of several comprehensively obsolete books on programming, I'd be honored to have the spine cut off and to have them digitized, as if there were still some value in the words and code my co-authors and I created those years ago. Otherwise they'd be pulped or used as kindling anyway.
- EA0707 2mo agoBooks like that are not what I am talking about.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- pessimizer 2mo agoIt's because of American law. If it were sane, everyone could share. Instead, if there are 25 copies of a book in existence, 25 different AI companies could buy them and pulp them. Woe be it if some company's lawyer has decided that they need to buy a new copy for each model they train. Otherwise, I think it's good that books are being scanned. Please, AI companies, keep all of the scans, clean them so they can be compressed tightly, back them up to an insane degree, encourage your employees to make their own archives and share them with their friends, and leak them to libgen, annas-archive, etc.
- ajsnigrutin 2mo agoThe copyright law here is broken in general. If there are only 25 copies and it's impossible to buy a new copy from the publisher, who's actually getting hurt if you "pirate" that book? How can anyone claim losses if they clearly don't want your money for a new copy.
- Filligree 2mo agoThe authors of the alternative books, which you might have bought instead if your weren’t reading old books like a high seas pirate.
- InsiderCrush 2mo ago[dead]
- chis 2mo agoWhatever judge ruled that it was legal to scan and use books if and only if you DESTROY a copy of the book was truly a moron. The law gets bent by judges all the time to be practical and fair, they should have used this opportunity to give a more sane ruling.
- rdtsc 2mo agoWhat was the supposed reasoning there? That the company can’t resell the books to profit or let others read or scan them?
- Filligree 2mo agoThat keeping the physical copy intact would mean creating a copy, and they don’t have the copy right.
- rdtsc 2mo agoI see the reasoning. I don't like or agree with it though but thank you for explaining it.
- qsera 2mo agoI think it shouldn't be illegal unless you give the copy to someone else.
- dghlsakjg 2mo agoYou are describing “piracy”. The laws against copyright violation are what require both the destruction of the book, and not distributing it. The whole thing is exceptionally stupid, and really, they should just download the archive copy of Anna’s archive (which is what the Chinese are doing, and what US labs were doing)
- sandblast 2mo agoWho is “they”, you think, if not the Chinese or US labs? Anna’s Archive still doesn't have everything — I suspect all these books described are not in this great dataset.
- Cider9986 2mo agoYou can donate to Anna's archive with over 20 different payment methods. It's one of the best ways to preserve and distribute knowledge. https://annas-archive.gl/donate https://annas-archive.gl/donate
- sieabahlpark 2mo ago[dead]
- hidelooktropic 2mo agoToo bad that website doesn't work for me. The "checking your browser" screen just reloads infinitely.
- solenoid0937 2mo agoDon't all these AI companies run at negative margins? How do they afford to buy all the books in the world? I don't see how these companies are not already bankrupt given how much they subsidize
- gambiting 2mo agoThe same way they can afford to build new data centres - they get investment money.
- imenani 2mo agoRegarding subsidy/profits: Anthropic at least seems to be on track to report a profitable Q2 2026 > Anthropic has projected revenue of at least $10.9 billion for the second quarter of 2026, more than double the previous quarter, on track for its first quarterly operating profit of $559 million. https://www.reuters.com/business/anthropic-ipo-valuation-hinges-190-200-billion-2028-revenue-forecast-sources-say-2026-08-15/ https://www.reuters.com/business/anthropic-ipo-valuation-hin...
- brookst 2mo agoYou should look at the first decade of other capital-intensive companies, like FedEx or spacex. The whole point of investment in private companies is to subsidize u profitable operations. If companies came out the gate being profitable they wouldn’t need investors.
- throw_m239339 2mo ago> How do they afford to buy all the books in the world? You are on a VC website at first place, what question is this?
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2mo ago1786782923 | Secondhand UK and Irish booksellers suspect AI firms behind strange bulk orders | https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/15/uk-ireland-booksellers-suspect-ai-companies-bulk-orders-data-acquisition https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/15/uk-irelan... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49308856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49308856
- ChrisArchitect 2mo agoRelated: AI companies are shredding rare books https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49068738 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49068738
- aitobox 2mo ago[dead]