Rupert Murdoch has indicated via Twitter that he will be buying a copy of Peter Thiel’s new book Zero to One for each of his senior managers. Peter Thiel is the co-founder of PayPal and the first outside investor in Facebook. In the Spring of 2012, he gave a lecture course at Stanford for software […]

The Wall Street Journal reported today that News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch is considering splitting his publishing and newspaper business off from his entertainment business.

The potential move would separate HarperCollins and News Corp.’s newspapers (including The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post) into a “far smaller” company compared to the entertainment business. The company issued a terse official confirmation that it is “considering a restructuring to separate its business into two distinct publicly traded companies.”

Here’s more from the WSJ: “A split of News Corp.’s businesses would be welcomed by outside investors who are more interested in News Corp.’s television and film assets than its slow-growing publishing businesses. The entertainment assets make up by far the bulk of the company, contributing three-quarters of the $25.34 billion in revenue for the first nine months of the fiscal year. Those assets accounted for roughly 90% of the operating profit in that period.”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

As the phone hacking scandal unravels at News Corps,  Vanity Fair has a new eBook out that traces the history of CEO Rupert Murdoch‘s company.

Rupert Murdoch, The Master Mogul of Fleet Street is a collection of 20 stories from the magazine edited together by editor Graydon Carter.  The book traces Murdoch’s rise to power and illustrates the history of his current predicament through stories by Sarah Ellison, Edward Klein, James Wolcott, and Michael Wolff among others.

The book is magazine’s second eBook of collected stories from the publication. It is currently available for $3.99 in the Kindle and Nook stores.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Guardian journalist Nick Davies has inked a book deal to write about Rupert Murdoch and the phone hacking scandal that rocked News Corp.. Entitled Hack Attack: How the Truth Caught up with the World’s Most Powerful Man, publication is set for fall 2012.

Faber and Faber publisher Mitzi Angel bought U.S. rights for the book in a pre-empt. Grainne Fox at Fletcher and Company negotiated the deal on behalf of the Jonathan Pegg Literary Agency in London. Publication is planned for tall 2012. Davies (pictured, via) also wrote Flat Earth News about media distortions–read his Guardian work at this link.

Here’s more about the book, from the release: “On July 8, 2009, Nick Davies broke the story that Rupert Murdoch’s News International had paid £1 million to settle legal cases that threatened to lift the lid on News of the World journalists’ involvement in illegal phone-hacking … The seismic shocks affecting Rupert Murdoch’s international media empire and family as well as law enforcement agencies and officials and highly placed political figures are already being called the biggest political scandal in Great Britain in seventy-five years. Davies, author of the bestseller FLAT EARTH NEWS, intends to provide an authoritative account and commentary on the News International Scandal, including new revelations.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

During the Parliament’s long interrogation of Rupert Murdoch this morning, one MP mentioned a book by CNN host Piers Morgan. TVNewser explained how MP and author Louise Mensch alleged that Morgan wrote in his 2005 autobiography (The Insider: Private Diaries of a Scandalous Decade) how he had hacked phones for a story.

Morgan denied the claim in a Twitter statement: “That MP just claimed I boasted in my book of using phone-hacking for a scoop. Complete nonsense. Just read the book. I’ve never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone, or published any stories based on the hacking of a phone. I wrote in my book that someone warned me phones could be hacked, so I changed my pin number. That’s it.”

Mensch (pictured, via) has written twelve books, and her official biography dedicated a paragraph to her writing career:  “On her 22nd birthday, Louise’s passion for writing was realised with a major publishing deal. To date, Louise has written twelve novels including a string of bestsellers. She has sold over two million books worldwide.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

President Obama already has “senator” and “Commander in Chief” on his resume, but now he can add his newest achievement: Successful children’s book author.

Random House Children’s Books announced Tuesday that the president’s latest book, “Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters,” is the fastest-selling picture book in the company’s history. The book publisher said 50,000 copies were sold in the first five days after the book’s release.

Written before the president took office, the tome for tikes pays tribute to such celebrated Americans as Neil Armstrong, Jackie Robinson, and George Washington. Obama’s proceeds will be donated to a scholarship fund for the children of fallen and disabled soldiers.

Over a million copies of another November presidential release by a Random House subsidiary, former president George W. Bush’s “Decision Points,” have flown off the shelves since the memoir hit bookstores November 9. The book is the third by a presidential author to top the million-copy mark, joining former president Clinton’s “My Life” and President Obama’s last two books, “The Audacity of Hope” and “Dreams from My Father.”

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Sarah Palin’s book publishers have been forced to file a lawsuit after pages of her upcoming memoir were leaked.

HarperCollins Book Publishers filed legal papers on Friday against the company Gawker Media after they refused to remove pages from Palin’s second book America By Heart: Reflections On Family, Faith And Flag from their website.

on Saturday, a judge issued a temporary restraining order against Gawker, saying it had to take down the pages — which it did, removing the images and commentary relating to them — most shockingly, perhaps, without making any further comment.

Publisher HarperCollins — which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., which also owns Fox News, the network that employs Palin as a commentator — brought the suit in New York district court on Friday.

HarperCollins Publishers spokeswoman Tina Andreadis told the Wall Street Journal Saturday evening, “We see the ruling as a victory. Gawker shouldn’t have posted this. It’s a copyright infringement. We are defending our author and our publication.”

But is it infringement? What harm was there in bringing Palin’s pages to light last week? The book is not in draft form — in fact, it’s completely finished and will be in bookstores on Tuesday. Barring some kind of strange machinations, every page that Gawker put on its website will be available for anyone interested to see in just a few days.

The hearing about Gawker’s posting of Sarah Palin’s “America by Heart” is scheduled for Nov. 30.

According to The AP, a judge has now ordered Gawker to remove the offending pages until the issue has been resolved in court.

They had uploaded around 20 pages from the book to their site ahead of its publication date of November 23.

The lawsuit against Gawker will begin in a hearing on November 30.