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For the first time, Amazon has bought adaptation rights for its own books

For the first time, Amazon has bought adaptation rights for its own books

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A first step to keeping IP in-house

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Image: Amazon Publishing

Today, Amazon.com published a new entry in its “Original Collections” series, The Fairer Sex, a collection of eight short Kindle works by Michelle Miller. What’s novel about this particular collection is that the company isn’t just publishing the stories, but Amazon Studios has acquired the media rights for the series, a first for the company, according to Deadline.

The eight romance stories were timed to drop on Valentine’s Day. They’re available for free in both ebook and audio versions for Amazon Prime and Kindle Unlimited members. The collection is all about “portraits of women figuring out how to make it in the world — and get some satisfaction while they’re at it.” Nonmembers can pick up the series for just under $8. In recent months, Amazon has published similar ebook bundles, including climate change stories, horror, and true crime, among others.

This is the first time Amazon has kept the entire content pipeline in-house, selling Miller’s stories and potentially locking them down as a film or television project that could air through Prime Video. It’s a significant development since Amazon can develop entire multimedia franchises. The company isn’t alone in this race to develop and capitalize on such content. Wattpad recently unveiled Wattpad Books, a publishing imprint designed to plug notable stories out of its larger repository of user-generated stories. Spotify also recently acquired a pair of podcast studios, which would allow it to develop its own pipeline of IP that could be scaled up into films or TV projects down the road.