Sumpter's 'secret formula' book goes to Allen Lane

Allen Lane will publish David Sumpter’s book, The Ten Equations, set to reveal “secret formulas” for success, riches and becoming more intelligent.

Helen Conford, publishing director at Allen Lane, bought UK and Commonwealth rights excluding Canada to the applied mathematician’s book from Chris Wellbelove, recently promoted to director at Aitken Alexander. Sumpter was previously published by Bloomsbury in the UK.

The Ten Equations: The Secret Mathematical Formulas for Making Money, Being Successful, Predicting the Future and Becoming Smarter has also received a number of offers internationally. North American rights were pre-empted by Flatiron's editorial director Noah Eaker while Swedish rights also sold in a pre-empt, and there is "a lot of translation interest", Wellbelove told The Bookseller.

In The Ten Equations, Sumpter “reveals the mathematical formulas that make the modern world go round, and shows how we can use them to better our chances of success, solidify friendships and live healthier lives, to guard against failure and financial ruin, and to see through scaremongering". The synopsis reads: “Sumpter shows how the same equations that are integral to Facebook can help you to work out how long to persist with a difficult task or how many episodes of a new Netflix series to watch before giving up.”  

In March, it was revealed Bloomsbury Sigma had brought forward the publication of Sumpter’s Outnumbered book to April, following the Cambridge Analytica scandal. His other book, Soccermatics: Mathematical Adventures in the Beautiful Game was also published by Bloomsbury Sigma.

The author is a professor of applied mathematics at the University of Uppsala, Sweden. Originally from London, Sumpter grew up in Scotland before studying at Manchester and Oxford and later moving to Sweden.