Nondestructive scanning can cost 10x as much. This is about cost. It is not about preservation. Google never destroyed the books it scanned. Amazon and Anthropic are attempting to save money. They are not considering whether or not a book is rare. They are treating books as a commodity. Rare books are rare. It is easy enough to identify when there are a limited number of copies of a book. The issue is saving money on items which cannot be easily acquired. There are plenty of books where there are thousands of copies available. Destructive scanning of these books is not the issue. It is indiscriminate destruction of items that are unique and in limited supply. Rare books are more than their content, they are the typography, materials, design, smell, and physicality of the items which matter. They are often very different than mass market hard covers or paperbacks. Not every book initially was produced in massive quantities. This is incorrect. Many books before they became important were done in limited runs. The lists from what I am reading often include books which are limited in quantity. It seems to be an attempt to get everything possible, not just the massively produced items. The problem is making AI companies separate the truly rare and unique items from the commodity mass produced items. Nondestructively scan the rare ones, cut up the ones where there are thousands of copies.