China will encourage private enterprises to play a bigger role in the publishing business, according to guidelines to be released by the industry watchdog.

Private enterprises will be allowed to publish books on science and technology, finance and economy, supplementary materials to textbooks, music and arts, and children's books, says a document to be issued by the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP).

They can be involved in the publication of these books by supplying content, with project cooperation or being a unit of State-run publishers, the document says.

The document will be officially released Monday, said Jiang Jianguo, deputy director of the GAPP, at a media briefing last week.

The guidelines also support the private players in exploring the overseas publishing market.

Previous guidelines issued early April last year asked the market-oriented news organizations and publishers to turn into full-fledged commercial players in one to two years.

They also pledged policy support to media giants which publish newspapers and magazines overseas, and acknowledged the status of private publishers for the first time.

The object of nurturing six or seven press and publishing giants with annual revenues of more than 10 billion yuan ($1.46 billion) in three to five years is reiterated in the to-be-released document.

As of 2009, the country has 958 publishers of books and electronic products and boasts 9,549 magazines and 1,943 newspapers. The output of the press and publishing industry is expected to hit 1 trillion yuan in 2009, the document said.