By Rachel Kaufman on July 21, 2011 10:20 AM New York Times Company CEO Janet Robinson said today in the company's earnings report she is "pleased" with how the New York Times' paywall has been working with consumers, and says the paywall will have a significant effect on the company's finances in the second half of the year.

More and more, it seems, the new books that really attract me don't come from the major trade publishers. That doesn't mean that New York isn't bringing out good books or that I don't read plenty of titles from trade houses. But I think that as people grow more sure of their tastes, they often gravitate to those specialized subgenres that particularly appeal to them, or to the more unusual or even minor work from writers they especially care about, and that usually means specialty presses.

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin set a September 15th ultimatum for Google to strike a revised settlement with The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers.

In what could be a boon to competitors Amazon and Barnes & Noble, Borders, the book chain, may close its doors for good this week. The Wall Street Journal reports that a bankruptcy auction is scheduled for the chain on Tuesday after the deadline for bids on the chain passed Sunday. Unless a buyer emerges, Borders will liquidate its assets and close its 399 stores. The chain also employs about 11,000 people

Green initiatives are prevalent throughout most industries these days, including publishing. But how sustainable are our publishing practices? Dennis Stovall, director of the publishing program at Portland State University and publisher at Ooligan Press, tackles this topic in the following interview.

A heavily corrected unfinished draft of an early Jane Austen manuscript sold at auction at Sotheby's in London on Thursday for almost 1 million pounds ($1.6 million), three times the estimated presale price, The Associated Press reported. The draft of "The Watsons" went to an unidentified buyer; Sotheby's said it is the only major manuscript by Austen still in private hands.

If you're looking for Brazenhead Books in New York City, you might run into a problem. In a grand tradition usually reserved for the fake ID or other illicit business, Brazenhead is hidden. Photography director Andrew Watson, in a succinct 3-minute video for DIY mecca Etsy, captivates with an account of a visit to this hidden bookshop and a meeting with owner, Michael Seidenberg.

British tabloid News of the World is publishing its last edition Sunday, News Corp executive James Murdoch has announced. The close comes in the wake of series of phone-hacking scandals involving high-profile celebrities, including members of the Royal Family. The latest involved the phone of a missing 13-year-old British girl, later found dead.

Fantasy novelist George R.R. Martin threatened to decapitate an unknown Amazon employee after 180 copies of A Dance with Dragons leaked ahead of the highly anticipated novel's July 12 release date. Martin blamed Amazon Germany for the mistake. Here's an excerpt from his post: "If we find out who is responsible, we will mount his head on a spike.

According to Poynter, Matt Taibbi's just-posted Rolling Stone piece on Michele Bachmann "borrowed liberally" from a 2006 City Pages cover story written by G.R. Anderson.

The newly minted Yale grad was feeling discouraged. The 24-year-old teacher had quit his day job to write a book, and only his two closest college buddies thought anything of his work. As he noted in his diary, he encountered "serious obstacles."

A federal judge ruled in favor of a defendant who reposted an entire article in a copyright case on Monday, Wired reports. The lawsuit was brought by Righthaven, a Las Vegas-based "copyright litigation factory," according to Wired, that has sued more than 200 websites, bloggers, and commenters for copyright infringement. This particular lawsuit targeted Wayne Hoehn, who posted an entire editorial from the Las Vegas Review-Journal and its headline, "Public Employee Pensions: We Can't Afford Them" on a website medjacksports.com.

Chunka Mui is looking forward to the day that a company offers a similar service for eBooks. But he'd like to go one step better. He wants Apple (or Google or Amazon) to credit him for all the paper books he's bought over the years. He wants to be able to read them as eBooks, too.

A few years ago, b2b publishers were snapping up all the titles they could get in order to create large publishing behemoths. Now, many of those big publishers have shuttered underperforming titles and split off the rest of their assets into smaller, more niche publishers, often led by the former employees of the big companies.

For all their convenience, e-readers such as the Kindle, Nook, and Sony Reader have introduced citation challenges for researchers and scholars.

Changes in the publishing industry not only affect those in the industry, but all readers, and the quality of the books they read.

The appeal by Thomas Steinbeck is similar to the one the high court rejected in 2009. They both stem from a dispute over who controls the rights to publish Steinbeck's works.

Is self publishing technology helping to connect writers with readers, or is it completely disrupting the publishing industry?

Do you see any problem with publishers offering exclusive deals to super markets? Do you feel this type of deal devalues a book?