Amazon's original content-producing arm has just secured the rights to make the first film from a book which the company also published.

Amazon Studios will now work on bringing horror novel SEED, written by Anna Ahlborn - and already a print and online best-seller – to the big screen.

The company said: "The move to option a novel in circulation is a first for Amazon Studios, which up to this point has optioned only movie scripts and episodic series projects submitted to [it]."

Roy Price, Amazon Studios director, added: "SEED has been a top-seller for Amazon Publishing so we already have a sense of the mainstream attraction of the story and are excited to keep the project in-house for movie development."

SEED originally appeared in the middle of last year as a self-published book, and became a best-seller with minimal publicity. It was reissued earlier this year after the author was asked to re-structure the plot and lengthen the book.