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 Artist'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, BA Hons, M.Bibl UKZN, Campus Librarian Howard College