Is Amazon Facilitating AI Destruction of Books?

Independent booksellers are buzzing about mystery sales coming in from a single vendor, and one seller based in New Zealand thinks they have uncovered the answer: "We, as a small second-hand bookseller at the end of the world, are suddenly caught up in the machinations of AI giants!!"

Bookhaven pointed to an article in the Washington Post from January 27, 2026 (paywall): "Inside an AI start-up's plan to scan and dispose of millions of books. Court filings reveal how AI companies raced to obtain more books to feed chatbots, including by buying, scanning and disposing of millions of titles."

Bookhaven wrote, "The destruction of the books is not an unfortunate side effect of the scanning process - it is part of the end goal: for AI to be the sole proprietor of all knowledge. Once this project is complete, the only way to retrieve information will be through AI tools because the books are all gone."

We discovered the May 8th post on Bookhaven after a reader told us about a mystery involving Zoom Books - and another vendor. "Currently, between Zoom and CollegeBooksDirect, more than half my sales are going to just 2 buyers. They are buying wildly various books and media, most of the items being obscure publications of extremely narrow interest." 

One title was, "General Orders Issued by Major-General Israel Putnam, When in Command of the Highlands, in the Summer and Fall of 1777." The reader said the sales are mostly non-fiction, and mostly print rather than audio or video - and all on Amazon.

We found multiple threads where sellers reported suddenly getting numerous sales from Zoom Books on  Abebooks, and Alibris as well, beginning this year. 

Sellers' first concern was that the orders would come back to bite them, fearing it was a scam of some kind. They pleaded for answers from Amazon on whether the Zoom Books sales were legitimate. 

One seller who cancelled an order explained they had received a total of 7 single-book orders from Zoom Books in the previous 5 days, and after reading reports from other sellers, cancelled the eighth order they received. But, the Amazon seller explained, "As a result of my cancellation, my Pre-Fulfillment Cancellation Rate (CR) went from 0% to 8.55%. Amazon threatens to deactivate my account if the CR is more than 2.5%."

On Reddit, a bookseller said, "Zoom Books is hitting my shop pretty hard--ordered I think 62 books in one ABEBooks order today... most foreign-language. The Alibris AutoBuy deluge is ongoing, too. Hasn't slowed down since January."

While numerous sellers report Zoom Books is gobbling up books, no one has confirmed the reason, and the mystery remains. One seller posted a theory on the Reddit thread that had nothing to do with AI:

"They're an up-and-coming massive used book clearinghouse. They already have a decent catalog of popular title; now, they appear to be aggressively buying titles that don't get much traction.

"It doesn't make the most sense, but if you're well-funded enough it doesn't make ZERO sense: if you have the only three copies of X title on offer, then the rare person who wants X will have to go to you. If you can corner the market on 100,000 different niche titles then you have a good chance of becoming a go-to for niche titles.

"I'm not on ABE so I'm just twiddling my thumbs & waiting to see if they'll discover my store. We've got niche titles for days lmao."

But the revelation that AI companies had deliberately destroyed books after scanning them, according to the WaPo article - and that they might be continuing to do so - had sellers upset. It was the exact opposite of what second-hand book selling was about, Bookhaven said. "We're in this business because we love books and we want to see them re-circulated so that more people can read them. Most of our colleagues are the same."

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