Canadian used-book retailer Zoom Books has approached European sellers with a request for Dutch-language titles, revealing a wish list of 800,000 such books.
The request was made in an email to Dutch retailer De Slegte, according to sources.
Founder Manroop Gill targeted De Slegte, a major clearance and secondhand bookseller in the Netherlands and Flanders, aiming to expand purchases of Dutch-language inventory.
The email invited De Slegte to share its inventory with ISBN codes so Zoom Books could select titles to order.
De Slegte did not respond to the request.
Spokesperson Kris Landuyt pointed to the retailer's website for ordering, saying, "Everyone can see on our website what we are selling and the desired items they can order."
Zoom Books has previously bought large quantities of books in Germany and Spain, as reported by Swiss broadcaster SRF.
In that case, the company purchased pallets from a German online bookseller, focusing on non-fiction titles from 1970 onward with ISBN numbers, one copy per title.
AI Training Concerns
The motive behind Zoom Books' massive purchase remains unclear, though a separate case in 2026 showed AI company Anthropic buying books through secondhand dealers.
The article suggests AI training relies on human-written sources, with books before 2022 considered reliable.
Anthropic has faced accusations of "destructive scanning," cutting off book spines for quick scanning and discarding them.
However, no hard evidence links Zoom Books to AI businesses, despite a previous page titled "ai-training-books" on its website.
Zoom Books denied working with Anthropic in a statement to elDiario. es, asserting it is a used-book retailer that buys surplus and used stock and sells it.
"We buy excess and used stock in and sell the one you sell," the statement said.
The article also mentions Anthropic reached a settlement potentially totaling $1.5 billion for books downloaded without author permission, after a U.
S. judge ruled the scanning as "fair use."
When asked why Zoom Books wants so many Dutch-language books and whether it might sell to AI companies, the outlet received no response at publication time.
