Should you’re a Netflix consumer, you may need observed they not too long ago rolled out a devoted hub referred to as “Watch Your Favourite Books.” Within the announcement, Netflix’s senior director of product merchandising mentioned, “We’ve seen an actual ardour from followers round Netflix’s library of e book diversifications.” And in reality, book-to-screen content material was featured in Netflix’s international high 10 each week in 2025.

Based on a CNN article, streaming has modified the panorama for diversifications due to the elevated want for tales, and on the 2026 U.S. E book Present, I heard the identical message: books are extra essential than ever to Hollywood.

The panel I attended was Optioned: A Writer’s Information to the Adaptation Room and included seven panelists, moderated by Kerensa Cadenas, the information director at Publishers Weekly:

• Edward Gamarra, founder, Gamarra Media
• Mary Pender, media rights agent, WME (William Morris)
• Mimi Diamond, e book scout, RR Scouting
• Julia Could Jonas, novelist, playwright and creator of the Netflix sequence Vladimir
• Liz Sarant, senior supervisor of IP Scouting, Netflix
• Orly Greenberg, media rights agent, United Expertise Company
• Jake Bauman, SVP of literary growth, Sony Photos Leisure

First, Hollywood pays consideration to trending tales and on-line fandoms

Pender, a rights agent, mentioned conventional publishers have usually elevated ladies’s fiction or “e book membership materials.” However the materials that BookTok elevates and promotes, she mentioned, is totally different: it’s new grownup and spicier content material that’s driving recognition and readership within the common market, which is what Hollywood is after.

Based on Bauman at Sony, the most important pattern of all is the self-publishing and fan-fiction pipeline. Books and authors with large built-in fanbases, constructed on platforms exterior conventional publishing, are delivering breakout titles—significantly in romance, romantasy, and LitRPG. “Everybody’s attempting to harness the ability of these fandoms.” The trail from Kindle Limitless web page reads to BookTok to a standard bookstore shelf to a Hollywood deal is more and more well-worn. Pender mentioned, “These [KU] web page reads actually do transfer the needle” in bringing higher market visibility books.

Some books will get optioned previous to publication

Greenberg, a rights agent, mentioned the timing for an possibility relies upon completely on the place the e book is in its publishing journey, what sort of momentum it has, and what the aggressive panorama appears like at any given second.

Sarant at Netflix confirmed that’s true from the customer’s facet, and timing doesn’t carry a bias. There’s one thing thrilling about buying a e book earlier than publication—you’re in on a secret, she mentioned, and also you get a head begin. However for different tasks, constructing some readership and word-of-mouth first could make the enterprise case simpler to place ahead. Bauman added that Sony has optioned books earlier than they even had a publishing deal, in addition to lengthy after publication. “It actually comes right down to timing and the way a lot conviction we have now that one thing can work.”

One often-overlooked alternative: backlist. When an possibility lapses and a e book reverts, Sarant famous, that may be “a terrific alternative” for a purchaser who was watching from the sidelines.

Do e book gross sales really matter?

This elicited among the panel’s most energetic responses. In brief: It’s sophisticated.

Pender was essentially the most direct: “E book gross sales don’t matter. The facility of the IP, a superb story, is at all times going to rise to the highest. It is going to discover a residence ultimately,” even when it takes ten or fifteen years.

Bauman provided a extra nuanced view. For theatrical releases particularly, consumers generally want knowledge to really feel assured a e book has breakout potential. When a e book hasn’t been revealed but, his crew is actually studying tea leaves, attempting to foretell whether or not it should turn into a bestseller.

Gamarra was essentially the most colourful about it. Having labored on either side—as a literary supervisor promoting books to studios and as a purchaser—he described e book gross sales as “the most important bane of my existence on either side.” He recalled a boss who as soon as informed him: don’t carry me a e book that offered hundreds of thousands of copies, carry me one which offered tens of hundreds of thousands. “If that’s your metric of success, you don’t perceive publishing in any respect,” he mentioned. He famous that studio executives are sometimes genuinely shocked to learn the way few copies most books promote by Hollywood requirements.

What did Gamarra’s personal reviews give attention to as an alternative? Engagement: evaluations, lively fanbase, group dialog. These metrics are equally essential as e book gross sales.

What makes a e book really feel adaptable?

Greenberg went straight to the intangibles: “It needs to be voice, it needs to be character.” She needs that feeling of choosing up a e book and feeling like “oh my god.” That’s what pushes the boulder up the hill. (For authors unaware, many books are optioned, however few really make it to the display screen. Many tasks get caught in growth hell.) Whereas plot and construction matter, Greenberg mentioned that the prose and voice need to be there first.

Bauman was extra systematic. He appears for an enormous, high-concept thought; at the very least one function that would appeal to a film star; a connection to the present cultural dialog; and a story construction that may be cleanly tailored to a three-act arc.

Sarant circled again to intuition. Early in her profession, she requested the way you constantly know a superb e book. The reply she bought: belief your intestine. “Now, over a decade later—it’s simply my intestine.”

Pender added, “When individuals learn one thing they actually love, they actually need to have another person learn it to allow them to have a dialog about it.” That impulse—the necessity to share—is a sign value being attentive to.

How a lot are the authors concerned? (Ought to they be concerned?)

Greenberg, from the agent’s perspective, mentioned the primary dialog with any writer consumer who has display screen aspirations begins with understanding what they really need: How concerned do you need to be? What does your dream situation appear like? How can we get you there? If a consumer has these aspirations, the technique is to construct expertise incrementally, beginning with their very own IP, and discover a producing companion who will genuinely champion them via the method.

Jonas’s personal recommendation, from her expertise adapting her personal work: work with smaller, hungrier corporations. Pender referred to as this dynamic “discovering your Sisyphus” or the inventive companion who will (once more) maintain pushing the boulder up the hill.

The distinction between streamers and studios

Bauman mentioned that Sony appears for tasks to develop as giant cultural occasions—movies that may inspire individuals to depart their houses and purchase a film ticket. The bar is exceptionally excessive, and it applies to the broadest potential common viewers.

Netflix’s mandate is totally different in scale and scope. Sarant described searching for tasks that may discover an viewers in each nation, or that may deeply resonate in a single particular nation. The quantity is larger; the worldwide proposition is a part of the calculus.

Gamarra provided a distinct body: previous Hollywood versus new Hollywood. Studios, in his view, nonetheless have a tendency towards private connection to materials and taste-driven decision-making. Streamers—which he characterised as tech corporations at their core—analyze knowledge and client conduct at a company stage in ways in which really feel extra mathematical than private.

Each Sarant and Bauman pushed again on that framing. Knowledge is in all places in each sorts of organizations. Netflix executives nonetheless have to personally join with a challenge they’re going to spend three to 5 years growing. At Sony, e book gross sales are sometimes “the closest factor we have now for knowledge,” Bauman mentioned—and each division weighs in, attempting to extract as a lot info as potential a few challenge’s prospects.

The children and household downside

Gamarra sounded the loudest alarm on one particular space: children and household programming. The contraction is extreme. Amazon eradicated a lot of its children and household govt crew. Netflix commissions within the area have come down. Disney has reduce its crew in half. Nickelodeon and Cartoon Community are shadows of what they as soon as have been. “The difference market has gone very downhill within the children and household area,” he mentioned—not simply by way of budgets however by way of the underlying will to fee.

Why? Pender and Gamarra each pointed towards YouTube. Streamers can see the place younger audiences are spending their time, and it’s cheaper and simpler to license what’s already engaged on YouTube than to develop authentic IP from books. Gamarra added one other issue: knowledge privateness legal guidelines stop platforms from amassing knowledge on youngsters, which removes a key instrument from the analytical playbook that drives acquisition selections. Nonetheless, Sarant mentioned that Netflix remains to be investing in optioning books within the children and household area.

The YA is just not YA downside

Probably the most fascinating stretch of the dialog was about YA fiction and the profound disconnect between what the label means in publishing versus what it means in Hollywood.

Gamarra mentioned that one main streamer internally defines “YA” as concentrating on a 27-year-old viewer. So the identical terminology describes fully various things relying on which facet of the desk you’re sitting on.

Bauman provided the studio perspective: YA isn’t outlined by who reads it however by whose story it tells.

The business actuality, Pender argued, is that breakout YA hits—Harry Potter, Twilight, and their heirs—turned phenomena exactly as a result of the individuals studying them are of their twenties, thirties, and forties, not youngsters. They mentioned how the self-publishing pipeline, Kindle Limitless web page reads, BookTok—all of it’s feeding an grownup reader who’s culturally figuring out with a YA story.

Mimi Diamond, a e book scout, identified a further wrinkle: many self-publishing authors, once they transition to conventional publishing, have books which can be about youngsters however find yourself being revealed on grownup lists and marketed to grownup readers. Youngsters’s publishers can get priced out of auctions.