Getting Published - Art, Science or Luck? About the book

After compiling and facilitating many writing workshops and seminars, we were constantly asked 'How do I get published?' 

The glib answer to this is to write a good book and send it to a publisher, but unfortunately, the first is not as easy as it might seem, and even if you have written an excellent book, there are no publishing guranteees.

So... Getting Published - Art. Science or Luck? was written and published with the aim of providing new and experienced writers with some guidleines and options.

There are many steps, and sorry to say, often stumbling blocks, on the path to publication, and Ginny and Helen have written a book that addresses most of these problems, and which gives authors the best chance possible of achieving that dream - a publisher's contract.

Our book deals with the three aspects separately, although they overlap to some extent:

Art - a CD is included in the book, which contains many exercises and ideas to stimulates creativity

Science - the basics of writing.  It advises on format, plot, sub-plot, characterisation, dialogue, how to submit your manuscript, and mistakes to avoid.

Luck - we all need it, but by following the advice in the first two sections, luck won't play such a large part in your endevours.

REVIEWS 

Getting Published:  Art, Science or Luck?  by Helen Osborne and Ginny Porter, is a fascinating book which, when I first saw it, I intended working through when I had time.  Having dipped into it, I now realise that I am going to do this much sooner than that!
 
It is at first sight a very practical, simple guide to getting published, with a lot of commonsense advice and interactive exercises, supplemented by a very useful CD.  If you look at it more closely, you realise that it is very carefully structured and covers a range of issues in a very systematic manner.  For an aspiring writer it is an exceedingly useful guide.  I suspect that even a frequently published writer would find in it things they didn't know.
 
The CD supplements the book and judging from the examples of text written by course-goers, is great fun to use with a group.  I went through Julia Cameron's The Artists's Way a few years ago as part of a group, and from that perspective, find this book to be the perfect sequel - practical, but based on similar principles.  But it stands on its own perfectly well, and is a book that is going to be hard to beat. I don't know of another book on this topic in the South African market, and welcome its arrival!
 
Catherine Dubbeld
Senior Librarian, University of KwaZulu Natal, Howard College Campus

Professional reading:

Divided into three sections, the first part of this somewhat quirky guide addresses the art of writing, while part two is devoted to “the Science of Writing”, covering aspects of grammar, sentence structure, plots, etc. “and all the boring, but essential, stuff that you need to know”. This section also offers some advice about how to get published and how to avoid the pitfalls, dealing with literary agents, assessing the
pro’s and con’s of self-publishing, and the challenges of marketing and selling a self-published book. The third section, entitled “Luck”, looks at elements of luck that might be needed and some of the factors that will determine whether or not a book gets published, although the authors express the hope that by following their advice in the first two sections, luck won't play such a large part for novice writers seeking
to get published.A novel and useful feature is that the book comes with a CD with interactive modules,
worksheets, exercises and tutorials, offering a variety of ideas to get the creative juices flowing.

Hans M. Zell
hanszell@hanszell.co.uk
The African Book Publishing Record, vol. 34, no. 2, 2008