In a break from its usual business model, Adaptive Studios, a venture that repurposes abandoned movie scripts, is partnering with StyleHaul, a fashion, beauty, and personal-style online network, to launch a line of books. StyleHaul Books will launch as an imprint of Adaptive Books, Adaptive Studios’ publishing unit.
StyleHaul is a networked global community of more than 6,500 fashion-and-style-conscious creators, who generally offer their products, brands, and personalities via YouTube channels. StyleHaul recruits new creators into its network, coaching and helping its members secure online advertising while building its members into self-sustaining fashion and beauty brands.
Olivier Delfosse, COO of StyleHaul, took note of the rise of YouTube fashion mavens turned authors such as Zoella, whose bestselling novel Girl Online was released by Simon & Schuster in 2014. “This is an opportunity we wanted to offer our network. It’s exciting to have a partner like Adaptive, who understands both the publishing and digital space.”
Marshal Lewy, a partner at Adaptive Studios, said the first titles from the partnership should arrive before the end of the year. “So in this case, it’s not old scripts, but we’re finding new content, and StyleHaul fits well with what we’re doing in digital. It’s all about new ideas and new talent.”
Lewy said he expects the deal to generate a variety of book ideas for novels, coffee-table books, memoirs, and series publishing. “We’re open to the kinds of books we can create from the partnership,” he said, noting that AS is also looking for content that can be turned into movies. Adaptive Books currently publishes 10–12 titles per year.
Adaptive Studios was launched in 2013 by a group of former movie and media executives. The company buys the rights to scripts trapped in so-called development hell and rewrites them for production in new media formats, such as adult and kids’ books, graphic novels, film and TV projects, and more. Indeed, AS owns Project Greenlight, the make-a-feature-film reality show created by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. The company is currently producing a film version of Coin Heist, a YA novel by Eliza Ludwig that Adaptive Books published in 2014.
AS will also work with two creative consultants. Dustin Thomason, an author and executive TV producer, and Nick Simonds, a former publisher at Blumhouse Books, will “help us find and shape new projects out of the StyleHaul community,” Lewy said.
Correction: an earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the two creative consultants were "hired" by Adaptive. However, both Thomason and Simons are independent book packagers who are acting as consultants and are not directly paid by Adaptive and do not work for Adaptive Studios.
