China promised the World Trade Organization it would open its publishing market further when it joined the industrial grouping in 2001.

The first joint venture between a State-owned and a private publisher took place between Hubei Changjiang Press Group and Jinli Partnership in 2003. Venture capital then moved into the industry.

In 2008, Motie received 50 million yuan in venture capital from a source it did not disclose. In August 2010, a new round of 100 million yuan from CDH Investment was injected into the company, indicating confidence in private publishing, analysts said.

However, the private publishing industry is still small relative to the State-owned sector. According to an article in the Financial Times written by Motie's President Shen, the company's annual sales revenue is 500 million yuan, representing just 1.03 percent of the country's total book sales.

Nonetheless, private publishers outperform State-owned publishers in producing best-selling titles, although they have a smaller share in the educational market.

"Compared with State-owned publishers, private companies are not competitive in terms of branding and asset structure. But we can see they have been growing at a very fast pace over recent years," said Zhou Zhonghua, general manager of Huazhang Publishing Company, which is a joint venture between China Machine Press and US-based Multi-Lingua Publishing International Inc.

"Because of their flexibility, private publishers can always spot business opportunities in the market quickly and precisely, a skill that easily catches the eyes of capital investors," said Zhou.

The modern trend is toward cooperation between private publishers and State-owned publishers over writing projects, authors and capital, he added.

Dai Zhiyong, a commentator at Southern Weekend, a Guangzhou-based weekly newspaper, said there are three routes for the regulatory body and all private publishers to consider during their development.

The first route is to experiment. Select several private publishing houses according to subcategory or groups and give the State-owned publishers equal treatment. This route can be supervised and it can be used to gradually accumulate managerial experience.

The second route is for GAPP to encourage local creativity, incorporating private publishers into specially designated creative industry parks.

The third route has already been stated in the official industry guidelines. Support should be given to the equal and cooperative operation of private resources and State industry. The government should not micromanage the way they cooperate, what they cooperate on or the ownership structure. If there are too many constraints, it is destined to be an "odd looking dance".

"No matter by what route, the ceiling for the kind of content that can be produced should be greatly raised in this age of the Internet. The system is already being innovated and a larger dance floor is in order," said Dai.

There are some who believe all books in the future will in fact be computers with hypertext links, video and complex graphic interfaces.

Zhang Yiwu, an expert in the publishing industry from Peking University, believes speed, agility and creativity are key advantages for private publishers.

"The next step for them is to look for uniqueness and the possession of different personalities," said Zhang.

Li Yueqing, founder and also general manager of Shanghai Wingsbook Co Ltd, shared the same view. "Being more professional and specific in their choice of sector is of great significance for private publishers," he said.

Most often, when one company has established a strong brand in a specific subject, it is likely to attract related resources.

As a market leader, Motie has followed this route. After its Ming Dynasty series succeeded, the company followed up with several other history trade books to strengthen its dominance in the field.

Another example is Beijing Fonghong Media Co Ltd, which put its emphasis on healthcare books after first publishing an extremely popular family medical book called You Can Be Better Than Doctors.

Unlike the practice at Motie of finding relatively unknown writers from Tianya.com, one of the country's most influential social network websites, Wanrong uses already established authors.

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Wanrong focuses on appealing to the fans of star writers, heavily promoting the books before they arrive on shop shelves.

Chinese private publishers also learned from the West from such literary sensations as the Harry Potter series, which subsequently became a huge box office success.

One of the hottest novels this year The Story of Du Lala's Promotion, which dealt with the issue of workplace social skills, has also been made into a movie, a stage play and a TV series.

Huang Juanqing, the president of its publisher Beijing Booky Publishing Inc, said the book was the least influential from a commercial point of view. As a consequence, the publisher relied on support from other formats such as the movie to maintain and develop interest from readers in order to "sell more and sell long".

"To develop healthily in the future, private publishers had better begin to cultivate their readers' interests, rather than catering to their interests, in order to stop imitators from developing the brand," said Zhang from Peking University.

He added rural audiences might be the next target. "The current bestsellers are designed for people who live in big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, but the demand in second-tier and third-tier cities is very strong," he added.