The judges for the 2009 New Zealand Post Book Awards have positioned their deck chairs, turned off their phones and slapped on the sunscreen as they embark on what will be a wonderful summer of reading.

Since we're tossing financial lifelines to every industry with enough lobbyists, how about some bailout bucks for a group that really deserves support: book publishers and sellers?

Rex Book Store (RBS) has joined the Google Book Search Publisher Partner Program which will see thousands of titles published by RBS digitized and indexed on Google’s search engine in the next several months.

The old proverb says "Good things happen to those who wait." Today, California homemaker and recently published author, Lucille Campilongo, has to agree with the adage.

What you may not realize is that even if you're not a famous writer, you can go out and get yourself a literary agent. This is a person that will contact publishers on your behalf to try to get your book read and possibly picked up by a major publishing