FOR bibliophiles, parting with their books might ignite a bittersweet feeling: relief for paring down the collection mixed with sadness at seeing the books go. But Kang Xia is experiencing more than that. He is distraught about how to distribute his 1,741 books to more than 6,500 buyers who paid for the books online.

    A former Bloomberg Business journalist in Beijing, Kang, 26, decided to sell his massive collection of 1,741 books before going to the United States to study at Columbia University in July. The books, mostly literature and history, fill 25 shelves in his apartment in Qinhuangdao City in northern China, according to his posts on WeChat.

    He posted a notice at 10 p.m. on May 16, saying that he would sell three books for 60 yuan (US$9.7) and seven for 99 yuan, including delivery costs. He asked buyers to leave messages about what kind of books they prefer when they transferred the money online and he would select the books randomly for them.

    “I bought some of the books for as little as 15 yuan each while others cost as much as 400 yuan. I’m not doing a business, so I quoted my prices on a whim. I hope to surprise the buyers when they open their packages,” said Kang in an interview.

    But to his surprise, within 24 hours after Kang posted the notice on WeChat, more than 772,000 yuan was transferred by 6,500 netizens to his online payment account on Alipay. The response was so overwhelming that upon Kang’s request, Alipay closed Kang’s account temporarily to prevent more transfers.

    “I was astonished by the flood of orders; I thought only a few hundred would sell,” said Kang, who has become an overnight sensation on Chinese social media and mass media over the past week.

    “Some netizens left notes saying they wanted to take care of my books and return them to me when I come back to China in the future. Some bibliophiles wanted to buy all of the 1,741 books,” said Kang.

    He plans to mail the books to around 300 people on a first-come-first-served basis and refund more than 6,000 people one by one.

    “Since May 17, I have been getting up at 8:30 a.m. every day and going to bed at 1:30 a.m. in order to sort the countless messages I have received via Alipay, WeChat and Weibo. I have to be very careful with each payment and mailing address. Doing this boring and repetitive task makes me feel like a worker on an assembly line,” said Kang. Moreover, the delivery costs to remote areas were much higher than he had expected. “A package to Xinjiang from Qinhuangdao costs me 64 yuan, which is almost the same price as the three-book package.”

    Kang has asked his parents from Northeast China’s Daqing City to come to Qinhuangdao to help him do the packaging, mailing and refunding work, but he is not sure when everyone will receive the books or get their refunds.

    In his WeChat posts, Kang said the 1,741 books were all purchased by him at physical and online bookstores in Beijing and Britain. He labeled each book with a code and made a spreadsheet for the convenience of locating the books on the 25 shelves.

    “I have read almost all of the 1,741 books, and I love every one of them. I have a sentimental attachment to the books, and this connection makes it hard to part with them. But I may not see them for the next couple of years anyway. A friend told me that a book dies if it sits untouched on a shelf. Only when someone read it again will it come back to life. So I want to share them with others. I will buy new books in the future,” he said.

    Two books Kang refuses to part with are Ayn Rand’s masterpieces, “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged.” “Rand is my favorite writer and I support her philosophical system of objectivism. The characters in her novels inspire me a lot,” he said.

    Kang said that the book-buying frenzy is an instant pleasure among book-lovers, but long-lasting pleasure lies in years of reading with a peaceful mind. “This book-buying craze appears to be a celebration of book lovers, but reading is a longtime task. One needs patience in reading. Acquiring knowledge is a long-term process, but the pleasure from it is long-lasting.”

    (Cao Zhen)