used bookstores

Japanese secondhand bookstores are reporting a fivefold surge in sales as bulk buyers purchase entire stock loads, in some cases tens of tons at once. One order of around 50 tons was shipped to the United States, and store owners suspect many large purchases end up in overseas facilities where books are scanned to train artificial intelligence models and then destroyed. The trend has raised concern among booksellers about losing rare volumes and the fate of the books themselves.