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A London publishing startup that’s received money from Google Ventures announced today that it has sold over a million of its personalised children’s books.
Lost My Name — founded in 2012 by Asi Sharabi and Tal Oron — creates customised books based around a child’s name. The books are created and ordered online, then sent out to printing partners around the world.
The Hackney-based company, which took investment from Google Ventures in June when it raised $9 million (£6 million), revealed the milestone in a press release today where it also highlighted how “The Little Boy/Girl Who Lost His/Her Name” has gone from being an obscure book to the bestselling picture book in the UK, Australia, and Canada. The company also claims it is the highest grossing picture book in six markets, including the US.
“As a technology company, we’re very proud to be innovating on one of the oldest media formats in the world – the physical book,” said Oron. “We think technology equals possibility. And possibility is the dominant currency in wonderful, nostalgic storytelling, where the book’s job is to inspire children to believe in adventure; that anything can happen if they imagine it. As screens become more and more seductive to children, there is an increasing need to inject more magic into books – to find new ways to spark their imagination.”
Last month, Lost My Name released a second book called “The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home”.
To celebrate the million books sold milestone, Lost My Name released some data showing how naming trends worldwide are reflected in the books it has created.
- Lost My Name has created books for 97,827 different names, of these 64,027 appear only once.
- Globally, Oliver and Olivia are the most popular names
- Lost My Name found interesting correlations between popular culture events and their influence on children’s names trends. For example:
- Nine months following the release of Disney’s Frozen in December 2014, Lost My Name saw a spike in sales of ‘Elsa’ and ‘Anna books
- A similar trend was discovered in the months following Game of Thrones Season 4. There was a spike in Lost My Name books ordered for names from the series e.g. Arya, Daenerys & Cersei
- “Taylor” books peaked in September 2014, following the release of “Shake it Off”
- Names with the highest scrabble score include: Mackenzie (26 points), Zachary (24 points) and Elizabeth (23 points)
Most popular UK names
- Top 5 boys names in the UK:
- Oliver
- Harry
- Charlie
- Jack
- William
- Top 5 girls names in the UK:
- Olivia
- Emily
- Amelia
- Isla
- Sophie
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