Meanwhile, rare booksellers continue to flag strange orders, recognizing that most sincere buyers tend to seek out single books, not order large batches of widely varying selections.
Just yesterday, an Irish bookstore called Kennys flagged a “bananas” order for 5,000 obscure titles, The Irish Times reported. Unlike bulk orders placed by universities or big libraries, this order seemed suspicious because the buyer made no attempt to haggle on the price—which has now become an obvious “red flag” that AI is potentially involved, the Times reported.
Although some booksellers said they could benefit in the short term from large orders, they fear that selling to AI firms indiscriminately destroying their collections “may be signing their own death warrant,” the Times reported.
Tomás Kenny of Kennys Bookshop told the Times that AI is “terrifying our industry,” and he plans to refuse orders likely destined for AI training in an effort to protect authors’ rights to their work and readers’ access to hard-to-find titles.
“Booksellers tend to be at the forefront of a lot of moral dilemmas and political and ethical issues. In most scenarios, it is not for me to decide,” he said. “However, if they are taking a book and scanning it with a view to taking intellectual property, then Kennys do not want to be a part of that.”
It’s possible that public backlash will pressure the biggest firms to adopt methods like the Internet Archive’s, which focus as much on preserving rare books physically as they do digitally. But it’s heartbreaking to imagine the alternative, where rare books become even rarer, especially for those who love the feeling of holding an old book in their hands.
Zhang knows the allure of rare books, occasionally pausing her work to read parts of the titles she scans. When asked what she liked most about her job, Zhang responded with the same gusto that many book lovers feel while browsing the shelves in stores like Kennys.
“Everything! I find everything interesting,” Zhang said. “I don’t feel it is boring. Every collection is important to me.”