News Corp. (NWS) competes with other media conglomerates like The Walt Disney Company (DIS), CBS Corporation (CBS), Time Warner, Inc. (TWX), Viacom, Inc. (VIA) and The New York Times Company (NYT) in the media and entertainment business. Our price estimate for News Corp's stock stands at $23.20, which is a premium of roughly 25% to market price.

News Corp. recently revealed its digital magazine "The Daily," specifically designed for Apple, Inc.'s (AAPL) iPad. Rather than being a modification of existing magazines or newspapers, this is a completely new product optimized for tablet viewing. The company had reportedly invested about $30 million to create the product.

HarperCollins has elected to push up the publication of Sarah Palin's memoir to November 17 -- it had originally been planned for the spring, but now you'll have time to get it for the holidays.

The book, which is titled Going Rogue: An American Life, is highly anticipated because it's special on two counts. It's the first book Sarah Palin has ever written and perhaps the first book she's ever read. It's currently the number six best-selling book on Amazon.com (Glenn Beck is number two, so lock your doors).

Bookselling behemoth Borders Group (NYSE: BGP) has signed a deal with HarperStudio to accept the new News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) imprint's books on a nonreturnable basis. In the publishing industry, unsold books can generally be returned to the publisher. In exchange, Borders will get a slightly better deal: 58% to 63% off the cover price, instead of the usual 48%, according (subscription required) to The Wall Street Journal.

Is this the future of the book business? No one knows, but the timing certainly couldn't be more strange for Borders. Terrible results and a failed effort to sell the company have sent the stock down to 65 cents per share. The company's balance sheet is a mess and there has been considerable speculation that the company's final destination is bankruptcy. Given those circumstances, it's hard to understand why the company would want to invest in inventory that they're completely on the hook for -- and can't return if they can't sell it.

HarperStudio is a brand new imprint, with former Hyperion boss Robert Miller at the helm. The plan is to shake up the publishing industry with lower advances offset by higher royalties. Cutting down on returns is another goal aimed at reducing costs.

Scoring this deal with Borders looks like quite a coup for HarperStudio, but it remains to be seen how long Borders will last as a relevant piece of the bookselling industry.

Since the announcement on Oprah's television program that Suze Orman's financial advice book Money & Women would be available for free as an e-book from Oprah.com, more than a million copies in English have been downloaded, as well as an additional 19,000 in Spanish, according to a statement released Saturday. This puts it the same league as such other free download sensations as the 9-11 Commission Report and Stephen King's "Riding the Bullet."

Yet, the offer hasn't kept people from buying the version of Money & Women published by a division of Random House last year. The book was ranked number 6 on Amazon on Saturday, behind Oprah Book Club selection A New Earth and just ahead of Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope. The 9-11 Commission Report remained a bestseller for months despite its availability for free online.

The big publishers remain skeptical about providing content for free online. While some see it as a valuable marketing tool, others suspect that it harms sales of traditional books. But the tide may be turning, albeit in baby steps. HarperCollins has announced plans to make available free electronic versions of some of its books, or portions thereof, the New York Times reported last week. They will not be downloadable, however.

Providing some free content is "like taking the shrink wrap off a book," said a spokesperson for HarperCollins, which will allow consumers to sample the content. "I didn't grow up buying every book I read," added fantasy novelist Neil Gaiman, author of some of the free content. "I read books at libraries, I read books at friend's houses, I read books that I found on people's window sills."

Suze Orman suggests that sales are a secondary concern for her in the Oprah offer. "This was not about getting people to buy the book, but getting them to read it, and that was the intention behind this offer."

When I first read this article in the New York Times, I thought it sounded ridiculous: "In an attempt to increase book sales, HarperCollins Publishers will begin offering free electronic editions of some of its books on its Web site, including a novel by Paulo Coelho and a cookbook by the Food Network star Robert Irvine."

But the more I think about, it makes sense: readers won't be able to print the books or download them to a Kindle or similar device. Will some pennypinchers sit there and read the entire book online? Of course. But this method of allowing us to browse books on the internet should generate buzz for the titles involved and increase sales. I'm skeptical about whether this would work on a broader scale but I think it's a smart move for the authors/publishers involved.

It's also evidence, I think, of another step toward bookstores becoming irrelevant. The "Search Inside!" feature on Amazon.com allows for easy browsing of books before buying and further developments like this will continue to erode the one advantage that traditional bookstores still have over the internet: You can browse before you buy.

HarperCollins will also begin offering as much as 20% of some books two weeks before publication -- I myself an looking to the preview of the new book from Peter Robinson, one of the best and most underrated mystery/suspense writers going today.

Judith Regan, who made a fortune for News Corp (NYSE: NWS) shepherding books from controversial people such as Howard Stern, is stirring up the pot again with an extraordinary lawsuit against the media conglomerate, which dumped her following the bad publicity generated by OJ Simpson's "hypothetical" book "If I Did It," and for making anti-Semitic remarks.

According to the Associated Press, Regan's suit is "saying her former employers tried to destroy her reputation and asked her to lie to federal investigators about Bernard Kerik, the recently indicted former police commissioner with whom she had an affair."

Wait, it gets better. First, she denies making any anti-Semitic remarks. In her lawsuit, Regan argues that the reason for her ouster from Rupert Murdoch's media empire was because of the company's political support for Kerik's one-time political mentor and current GOP presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani.

"Because of Ms. Regan's affair with Mr. Kerik, court papers say, a senior News Corp executive told her he believed she had information about Mr. Kerik that could hurt Mr. Giuliani's campaign and she should lie to federal investigators," the AP said. News Corp denounced Regan's claims as "preposterous."

Sounds like the makings of a good novel, no?

John Edwards has attacked Senator Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for accepting donations from News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) and Rupert Murdoch. Here's a sampling of his rhetoric:

"News Corp's purchase of the Dow Jones Co. and The Wall Street Journal should be the last straw when it comes to media consolidation. I'm challenging every Democratic presidential candidate to refuse contributions from News Corp executives and return any they've already taken, beginning with Rupert Murdoch."

"John Edwards will never ask Rupert Murdoch for money -- he won't accept his money."

"The basis of a strong democracy begins and ends with a strong, unbiased and fair media –- all qualities which are pretty hard to subscribe to Fox News and News Corp. It's time for all Democrats, including those running for president, to stand up and speak out against this merger and other forms of media consolidation."

But according to DealBook, "News Corporation claims that its publishing unit, HarperCollins, paid Mr. Edwards a $500,000 advance -- and $300,000 in expenses -- for his 2006 book, Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives.

Oops. Don't you hate it when you get caught?

And as for "speaking out against this merger," hasn't Mr. Edwards heard of the free market? If Rupert Murdoch wants to buy Dow Jones (NYSE: DJ), and Dow Jones wants to sell, how or why should it be blocked? It's really not an anti-trust case at all, as far as I've heard.

The only thing more hypocritical than this would be if Mr. Edwards spoke out about poverty but worked at a hedge fund for a large salary. Oh wait ...

HarperCollins is a legendary book publisher with authors like Mark Twain, H. G. Wells, Agatha Christie, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Dickens, and even John F. Kennedy. The company was founded in 1817 by the brothers James and John Harper.

Since the late 1980s, the company has been a part of News Corp. (NYSE:NWS), and the division pumps out about $1 billion in revenues. However, the fact remains: the traditional book publishing business is ailing.

Well, this week, HarperCollins announced an investment in LibreDigital, which is a division of NewsStand (the amount was not disclosed). Basically, this will allow HarperCollins to digitize its content. What's more, the company will market these services to other publishers and individuals. In the Age of Blogging, this is definitely a smart move.

The services include: typesetting, digital warehousing, Net distribution, and online marketing. In the press release, HarperCollins indicated that " all publishers must develop this capability." That is certainly true.

Actually, HarperCollins has been fairly aggressive with digital technologies. For example, it has digitized more than 10,000 books over the years.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

If I Did It, how much would I be worth? That's the question many buyers on eBay and reporters from the Wall Street Journal are asking today. Many listings of If I Did It, OJ Simpson's supposedly hypothetical retelling of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, have already been pulled by eBay, Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) at News Corporation (NYSE:NWS)'s HarperCollins unit's request. The bids were reportedly in the thousands before the auctions were ended, although many booksellers interviewed by the WSJ said they would put the price of the book closer to $1000 (although they'd only pay $100, buy low, sell high, anyone?). This auction ended at a whopping $8300.

Some put the book's price between $2000 and $5000, although everyone seemed to agree that such a price wouldn't be sustainable in the long run.

Instead of beating the First Amendment drum, I'll just riff on a capitalist beat: people obviously want to read the darned thing! My objection would likely be more literary snobbishness than righteous horror -- Judith Regan ain't known for her wordcraft. But if people want to read it so badly they'll pay thousands ...

The Australian media baron Rupert Murdoch gave in to public pressure and his News Corporation (NYSE:NWS) book operation, Harper Collins, will not publish the OJ Simpson book If I Did It. A TV special related to the book was to run on Murdoch's network, Fox.

Australia is a former penal colony and perhaps Mr. Murdoch was worried that his US citizenship would be revoked and he would be returned to his island home.

The US has a long history of banning books. Catcher In The Rye was kept out of schools off and on for years. Ulysses by James Joyce, perhaps the greatest novel of the 20th century, was banned by the US Customs Office for fifteen years. The wonderful thing about banning books or blocking their publication is that, once the process begins, it has no clear end.

Mr. Simpson's book is a hypothetical account of what might have happened if he had killed his former wife and one of her friends. How could it be that Mr. Simpson has no First Amendment rights? OJ may be a jabbering horror of a human being, but he retains the right to write and publish as he see fit.

Murdoch may have wanted to appear the apple polisher to the public, but has done his industry a great disservice.

Douglas McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.