ABA CEO Allison Hill wrote in her annual letter to members that membership grew by 19% in 2025, with the addition of 605 brick-and-mortar, pop-up, and mobile stores. The AP breaks it down further as 3,417 members (up 554 members from a year ago), operating at 3,783 locations. The organization has grown 151% over the last six years. Hill writes, “the majority of stores also reported year-over-year increases in sales for 2025 over 2024.” She continues: “2025 was also the most challenging year for indies on record as our members faced rising costs, tariffs, the impact of ICE and the […]
Bookstores
Zoom Books Responds To Accusations of Selling Books For AI Scraping
Canadian company Zoom Books has responded to accusations that they are purchasing out of print books in bulk from bookstores to sell to AI companies for LLM training. They write in a statement to PL that the claims made in Demócrata that books purchased by Zoom Books from Spanish booksellers are being scraped for AI are “categorically false.” “To be unequivocally clear: Zoom Books does not digitize or destroy used or new books for the purpose of training AI models, nor for any other purpose,” writes the company. “Any claim or implication to the contrary is inaccurate.” They continue: “Our business […]
Canadian Company Zoom Books Is Buying Out Of Print Books For AI Scraping
Canadian company Zoom Books is buying out of print books in bulk from used bookstores all over the world to scrape them for LLM training. Multiple bookstores in Spain recently flagged unusual orders, writes Demócrata. One store, Fènix in Badalona, noted that orders focused on “Catalan non-fiction titles that had been stored for years and had practically no commercial outlet.” Demócrata notes that “stores in Germany, the USA, New Zealand, and Australia have received similar orders, some of more than a thousand books, many out of print.” Zoom Books writes on its website that it buys used books and accepts […]
B&N CEO Responds to Criticism About Selling AI-Generated Books
Responding to online criticism, Barnes & Noble ceo James Daunt tempered remarks he made earlier this week in a Today Show interview, in which he said that the chain would stock AI-created books as long as they were clearly labeled. “I have actually no problem selling any book, as long as it doesn’t masquerade or pretend to be something that it isn’t, and that it has an essential quality to it, and that the customer, the reader, wants it,” Daunt told book club host and imprint publisher Jenna Bush Hager. “So as long as an AI-written book says it’s an […]
Denver Book Society in Legal Fight Over Name
The Denver Book Society, the two-month old bookstore that parted ways with its cofounder in March, is now going to court to claim it didn’t infringe on another store’s trademark. The Denver bookstore, owned by Rich Garvin, is suing a Berkley, CA bookstore and wine bar called Book Society, which has been fighting with Garvin over their shared name. Book Society, which was founded in 2023, filed a trademark application for the term “book society” in August 2025 and contacted Garvin with concerns about their similar names the same month, according to the filing. The trademark application is still pending. […]
Avid Bookshop to Close
Athens, GA independent store Avid Bookshop will close its doors on April 26, “six months shy of our fifteenth anniversary,” founder and owner Janet Geddis announced in a Facebook post. The store opened in 2011. “My health is at the heart of this decision: I am burned out and have been for years,” Geddis writes. “Even on my best days, I live with undercurrents of stress and anxiety that drag me down. Until fairly recently, I could muster through, pulling out all the stops to complete even the most dreaded work tasks. That talent has left me. “I. am. exhausted.” […]