ISBNdb removed a section of its website claiming to sell printed books for AI training on July 28, nine days after 404 Media reported on the practice.
The retraction
The company added a note to its homepage and news page on July 30. It stated that the landing page was a test of market interest and that no service was ever launched. The update said ISBNdb has never purchased, scanned, or sold a book for AI training.
“We don’t train AI models, and we never have. The page was a test of market interest; no such service was ever brought to life. We’ve taken the page down.”
ISBNdb described its core business as providing a card catalog of book data for bookstores, libraries, and reading apps. The company insisted this function remains unchanged.
It did not respond to requests for comment from 404 Media.
Why the books were wanted
Before the page was taken down, ISBNdb argued that printed books published before 2022 were ideal for training data. The claim was that these older texts did not contain AI-generated content. The company suggested that ingesting such material could prevent model collapse.
One now-removed article also advised authors who opposed this use of their work to write specifically to manipulate or sabotage AI models.
Another marketing piece admitted that destroying physical books during the scanning process would create a bad public image. It noted that a headline reading “AI company destroys two million books” would not generate sympathy.
What the orders looked like
404 Media spoke to booksellers who reported a sudden increase in sales activity. One seller described the orders as unusual.
“It’s not just the quantity, but the weirdness of the orders,” the seller said. “The type of books […] there’s no rhyme or reason to it. Also, there’s a total disregard for the price of the book.”
The seller noted that some books sold through this channel were greatly overpriced, a trait they associated with buyers having unlimited funds.
ISBNdb’s removed materials stated that buying paper books at scale from the secondary market did not deprive creators of income. The argument was that these were books that had already fully discharged their financial obligation to their authors.
Related legal action
In January, book authors filed a copyright lawsuit against Anthropic. The case revealed internal documents showing Anthropic planned to obtain and scan millions of printed books and destroy them in the process.
An investigation by the Washington Post found that Anthropic was buying books from a company called Better World Books. This is one of several marketplaces where libraries, retailers, and individuals sell used titles.
