A private printing press at Manvila near here was gutted in a major fire in the early hours of Saturday morning, police said.
No one was injured in the mishap, they said.
Several modern printing machines and thousands of textbooks printed for higher secondary classes were destroyed in the fire. Electric short circuit was stated to have caused the fire.
Four workers who were sleeping inside the press spotted the fire, which began at 1 a.m, ran out and informed the Fire Force, police said.
As many as 23 fire force units from Thiruvananthapuram and Kollam Districts battled till afternoon to douse the fire completely.
