Packt Publishing's Author Website
Your one stop resource for submitting title ideas, learning about the writing process, and getting all Packt's latest news.
March 13, 2009 by admin
In April 2004, Packt published its first book on phpMyAdmin and took the unusual step of allocating a percentage of its sales direct to the phpMyAdmin project.
Supporting the Open Source projects that we published on is our way of broadening the Open Source philosophy. We felt that these payments could also provide Open Source projects with a sustainable source of revenue. At the time this was a unique set-up, which has now been adopted by other publishers.
In the five years that have followed, Packt has gone on to publish over 200 books on Open Source projects, paying over $125,000 in royalties in the process. This type of initiative has given Packt a recognisable face in the Open Source community and has allowed us to work and grow strong relationships with many different projects and people. During this time we have witnessed myriad developments and changes to communities and projects and seen many infants grow into mature adults.
Our publishing strategy is to develop focused, solution-based books on specific subjects. We tend to avoid large, general volumes in favor of more purposeful information, giving readers more of what they need to know to get the job done. This has led us to working on nascent, early-adopter technologies and software and has enabled us to work with various projects from their early days.
We had not long published our second book on Mambo, the Open Source Content Management System (CMS), when it was forked by the Open Source Matters group to form Joomla! It was not long after that when we released Building Websites with Joomla!, the first book written on this new CMS. We had built a close relationship with the development team behind Joomla! and were fortunate enough to work closely with them following the fork. This enabled us to ensure that Building Websites with Joomla! was published quickly and against the latest release.
In line with our Open Source Project Royalty scheme, we were able to support the Joomla! project from very early on, with our payments contributing to its exponential growth. Packt has gone on to publish nine Joomla! books and has witnessed its development to more than one million downloads.
Indeed it was Joomla! that won Packt’s first annual Open Source Content Management System Award in October 2006. This was an initiative set up to encourage, recognize, and reward Open Source Content Management Systems. In the three years since its inception, Packt has paid $45,000 in prize money across five different categories. This has helped to cement Packt’s position in the Open Source community and enhance its relationship with some of its key members.
Packt is intent on continuing to service and support Open Source through its books and various initiatives. We have ambitious plans for working with and publishing on a variety of new and exciting Open Source projects and hope to strengthen our existing relationships further.
