(Yicai) Aug. 4 -- Chinese readers are snapping up ‘support packs’ costing CNY99 (USD13.80) each to drum up funds to help book publishers in Zhuozhou, northern Hebei province, which have suffered huge damages by the record floods brought by Typhoon Doksuri, get through the disaster.

There are nearly 100 publishing houses based in the Beijing Southwest Logistics Center in Zhuozhou Park, which spans an area of 400 mu, equivalent to 266,666 square meters, and is the largest in the country. But on July 31, the floodwaters began to rise and seep into the warehouses where the books are stored.

BooksChina, a large online book sales platform that houses four million books in Zhuozhou, declared a state of emergency on Aug. 1. At 3 p.m. China time that day, water flooded the first floor, swelling to three meters high, and by 4 p.m. over 100 employees had taken refuge in a four-storey office building. By 8:30 a.m. the next day, everyone, including children and pregnant women, had been rescued, it said.

“As a website that primarily sells tail-end books, this has not only cost us huge losses but it has also destroyed irreplaceable rare, out-of-print, old books,” an employee said.

Some 3.2 million books, around 80 percent of BooksChina’s stock, have been written off and the damage is expected to come to CNY300 million (41.8 million), the firm said on Aug. 2.

“This is the most devastating blow that we have suffered in 25 years,” it added.

In order to help the platform survive, many readers have offered to buy the damaged books. But BooksChina said that as the soaked books might be contaminated with dirt and germs, they will not be sold. Instead, the firm is selling a ‘support pack,’ which includes 4 new books that will be published after the disaster, 1 metal bookmark and 1 commemorative badge. Some 30,000 sets have already been bought.

Editor: Kim Taylor