To be clear, those are rare books bought by the kilogram, not rare books people would want to buy.
If your aunt’s boyfriend’s sister’s dog’s mum writes a sci-fi book that’s a blatantly obvious cross between star wars and lord of the rings and gets 100 copies printed and friends and family buy 20 to support her, that’s now an ultra rare book with only 80 copies on the market and a prime target for AI companies to buy because it’s cheap and it’s new and unique training data.
Except that rare book thingy, where they’re debinding, scanning and trashing them.
Or the fact that a ton of indie forums had to close or go private because of the excessive scraping.
To be clear, those are rare books bought by the kilogram, not rare books people would want to buy.
If your aunt’s boyfriend’s sister’s dog’s mum writes a sci-fi book that’s a blatantly obvious cross between star wars and lord of the rings and gets 100 copies printed and friends and family buy 20 to support her, that’s now an ultra rare book with only 80 copies on the market and a prime target for AI companies to buy because it’s cheap and it’s new and unique training data.
That’s awful, but it isn’t what this post is about.