Roald Dahl Estate partners with Lost My Name to offer personalised book

The Roald Dahl Literary Estate will create a personalised adaptation of a Roald Dahl classic in partnership with publishing start-up Lost My Name.

It is the first time the estate has commissioned a new story based on one of the late, great author’s worlds and characters.

The deal is also a first for Lost My Name, which hasn’t before adapted a well-established children’s world for one of its books.

The partnership is a joint IP venture involving one Roald Dahl book initially, but the organisations would not reveal any details regarding revenue or profit sharing terms. Both also declined to reveal which Dahl book the personalised adaptation will be based on, or which characters, saying the work is still "in development". Instead they will release the final details in June when they begin taking pre-orders for the book. It will eventually be published on 13th September - on Roald Dahl Day and also in time for the Christmas market.

They have revealed though that the adaptation will be illustrated by Adam Hancher, who has previously published with Frances Lincoln, and written by Lost My Name co-founder David Cadji-Newby, with "great editorial support” from the Roald Dahl literary team. Cadji-Newby also created its top-selling personalised books The Little Boy/Girl Who Lost His/Her Name. That creation has so far sold 2.6m copies across the world, according to the company, with 428,820 of those in the UK. In 2014, the company claimed to have out-sold the best-selling picture book title that year according to Nielsen BookScan by Julia Donaldson- Superworm - shifting 132,616 copies in comparison to Donaldson’s 115,996.

The titles are sold directly through Lost My Name’s website and are not tracked by Nielsen BookScan.

Luke Kelly, managing director at The Roald Dahl Literary Estate, said: “Roald was the master at creating child heroes to lead us through his stories. We are delighted that children will now be able to step into those pages. We are always seeking innovation in our publishing, and this great partnership allows us to deliver on that hope.”

Asi Sharabi, c.e.o at Lost My Name, said the partnership represented a “bold new direction” for its personalised stories. “Roald Dahl’s books have been loved by many generations and we are thrilled to be creating the first story that will transport a child into Dahl’s world and ignite their imagination,” he said.

He told The Bookseller that the idea to collaborate came after he met Kelly and the pair had creative "chemistry".

"Just as a lot of things that have happened with the Lost My Name journey, it wasn’t planned. I met Luke and there was a very good chemistry," Sharabi said. "Once we got to know each other we thought ‘of course we should do something together. It makes perfect sense'. There are a lot of similarities between what we are trying to do and what Luke is trying to do in terms of innovation. It was an opportunity that presented itself.

“The deal is for one book, but there is potential to do more. We are looking at this as an experiment, both for us and for them, but we both have a strong feeling this is not going to be the only one.”

Sharabi said that he “absolutely” thought the creation would go down well with both child and adult fans of Dahl. But he stressed the collaboration was only viable because of its nature as a joint IP creation as opposed to a licensing deal.

“We did this as a joint venture IP creation rather than a licensing and royalties deal," he said. "Licensing is something we weren’t excited about. We are creators, artists and designers, and I personally do not want Lost My Name to become a vehicle for licensing. But the opportunity to engage in a new joint IP creative venture is a genuinely exciting opportunity."

He added: “We have rejected quite a lot of offers from big brands and franchises – the last five deals I have rejected because we do not just want to become a vehicle for licensing. I personally find that boring. I can see us working with the top two or three story telling brands in the world on something that is genuinely exciting, but we have our standard and we do not want to cross it.”

The new Roald Dahl title will work the same way as Lost My Name’s other titles, whereby customers create a book by entering the name and sex of a child online, and a set of algorithms puts together a personalised picture book for that child with illustrations.

Lost My Name was founded by Sharabi, Tal Oron, Cadji-Newby and Pedro Srapicus in 2012. It received $13m (£9m) in Series A investment so far, including €4m (£3.2m) in funding from Berlin-based investor Project A Ventures last year, and Sharabi revealed another funding round is ongoing.

In July it revealed it had made nine people redundant as part of plans to improve performance and invest more in product. To that end this year it will publish five new titles in 2017 including Kingdom of You, which has just launched and its Dahl collaboration, meaning that by the end of 2017, it will offer seven personalised book titles.

Penguin Random House publishes Dahl’s print books. Since 1998, 11.3 million of the author's print books have sold for £61.8m, according to Nielsen BookScan. Roald Dahl’s centenary was celebrated last year, which saw a global celebration of the much-loved children’s author with events and publishing and 1,165,568 titles sold for £6.06m alone.