Manning Publications


Manning Publications is an American publisher established by Lee Fitzpatrick and Marjan Bace that publishes books on computer technology topics, with a particular focus on web development. Their distinctive brand features illustrations from the 1805 edition of Sylvain Maréchal's four-volume compendium of regional dress customs on the covers of many of their books.

Company

Manning started in 1990 when the two partners, Marjan Bace and Lee Fitzpatrick, joined to form a book packaging business.
Manning did business with most of the established technical publishers as well as with the IEEE Computer Society Press. Their scope included all of engineering and computing. An early success was the publication of a materials science series of a dozen specialized tomes; it included the large Encyclopedia of Materials Characterization with over 50 contributors. Soon Manning began to see computing topics as the liveliest and most interesting.
Manning would eventually be drawn to the computer industry. Computing soon became the focus of Manning's publishing. Manning's first customer for a computer book was Addison Wesley. Addison Wesley's reputation helped open doors at other leading commercial houses, a number of whom became Manning customers.
The company introduced a unique Manning Early Access Program which allows subscribers to receive incremental completed chapters before the book is finally published. It has also partnered with its competitor O'Reilly Media to add some of its digital library on the Safari Books Online cloud platform.