Independent bookstores and second-hand dealers across Europe and the United States faced an unexpected wave of automated online orders for obscure, out-of-print, and specialized texts in early 2026, according to an investigation published by bookseller Marçal Font i Espí and artificial intelligence specialist Xavier Vinaixa Roselló. The purchasing activity, traced back to an entity named Zoom Books acting on behalf of artificial intelligence developers, targeted material like regional cookbooks, local history diaries, and specialized conference proceedings to scrape and feed into machine-learning models before destroying the physical books.
The Anatomy of the Automated Book Buying Spree
The anomaly began in late April 2026 when Marçal Font i Espí, of Llibreria Fènix in Badalona, Spain, received seven separate orders in a single day for neglected inventory that had languished on his shelves for years, according to his published findings. The buyer paid shipping fees that quadrupled the actual cost of the books, using separate transactions rather than combining shipments. According to Font i Espí and other independent dealers, the pattern matched automated bot activity designed to sweep up specific physical texts rather than bestsellers.
Dealers across Germany, France, Australia, and New Zealand soon reported identical purchasing behavior, according to the booksellers’ accounts. The buyers targeted technical treatises, regional language texts in Catalan, Basque, Galician, and Valencian, and out-of-print Spanish Civil War diaries. According to reporting from outlets like The Washington Post regarding related copyright litigation, the operation formed part of a broader corporate push by artificial intelligence firm Anthropic to acquire physical text for training data.
Project Panama and the Mechanics of Destructive Scanning
Internal corporate documents disclosed in U.S. copyright litigation revealed that Anthropic launched an initiative dubbed “Project Panama” in 2024, allocating millions of dollars to acquire, scan, and ultimately discard physical books, according to reporting cited by The Washington Post.
The resulting data fed large language models, while the physical books were destroyed to eliminate remaining traces, according to investigators Vinaixa Roselló and Font i Espí.
The Defiance of Independent Booksellers
Reactions among second-hand booksellers varied widely as low profit margins left many dependent on any source of income, viewing the sudden corporate interest as a welcome financial boost. However, other independent dealers chose to push back against the mass extraction of physical heritage. Madrid bookseller Luz Serra, operating through the shop Tráfico de Libros, joined colleagues in implementing deterrent surcharges exceeding 100 euros on all orders originating from the United States, effectively halting the automated acquisitions from her inventory.
Without structural reform, critics warn that the relentless scraping and destruction of rare physical editions threatens to erase the original print records of human history, leaving memory entirely dependent on proprietary digital servers.
Keep reading