Mr. Rudin worked for Mr. Diller as head of production at 20th Century Fox during the 1980s, and the two men have remained friends. For this venture, they decided to work with Ms. Coady because she was an early innovator in trade paperbacks at Random House and went on to work with authors like Augusten Burroughs at Macmillan’s Picador imprint.

They are hoping that a brand new enterprise, without the legacy costs and practices of traditional publishing, can find traction.

“Evan and the Atavist started this with nothing,” Mr. Diller said. “We are going to lead this with a lot of marketing money and investment. They want to do bigger things without losing control.”

It has been a remarkable run for Atavist, which was conceived over a series of beers in Brooklyn and began publishing in 2011 with articles built for tablet reading.

Mr. Ratliff said the offer from Mr. Diller and Mr. Rudin got Atavist’s attention because it was not just about the software.

“Other people came to us with various ideas, but this allows us to do what we did before, except bigger,” he said. “We have a partner with the same vision that we have.”

Brightline and Atavist will remain separate for the time being and the books will be published under the Atavist name. No author has yet been signed by Brightline, and Mr. Rudin asserted that the new enterprise was not an attempt to get an early look at books he might make into films.