The Peerless Pain, Peculiar Pleasure and Profound Purpose of Personalised Stories

First things first.
Let’s get this clear.

Most personalised books are kind of horrid. Icky. Cheap, tacky cash-ins where a child’s name or (even worse) face is inserted into a pre-existing story. Yep, personalised stories have historically been Bad News.

But we make personalised books. And we make them (or try to make them, you be the judge) better than they’ve been made in the past. Because instead of inserting a child into a story, we build a story around a child — around their name, address, their likes and dislikes, their date of birth, family, characteristics… So their book is unique to them. Properly, profoundly different.

So okay, then why doesn’t everybody do it? Why are good personalised books so hard to find? Because, basically, making good personalised books is really, really hard, for all sorts of reasons. We know, because we’ve tried it. So here are just some of the reasons why making personalised books is a bit of a headache:

1. Character

Most good books start with character.. And it’s up to the writer to create that character, and make it memorable and interesting enough to want to keep reading about. But with personalised stories, the character is the child the book is for. And we don’t know a lot about that child. We don’t know their hopes, or fears, or idiosyncrasies. All we know is their name, or address, or hair colour. Which isn’t a lot to go on.

2. Plot

With our first book, the story is generated by the letters of a child’s name. This means that every name creates a different story. But it also means that the story is impossible to predict or control. As a writer you want to develop characters, create a meaningful arc and a satisfying conclusion. When the bulk of the story is being randomly generated, it makes things rather tricky. Writers like to be in control. When the story is being dictated by elements outside of their control, they start to worry.

3. UX

Personalised books are weird, in the sense that they actually don’t exist until customers make them. We print everything on demand, so up until the point a customer visits our site and gives us the information we need to make a book, it’s just a potential book. Blank pages. Paper, nothing more. So we need customers to make their books. And to encourage them to do it, we need to make the user experience as simple as possible. The more complex the user interaction, the less likely they are to make a book, and the fewer books we sell. Asking for a child’s name is quite straightforward. But asking for their height, number of teeth, their five best friends and favourite school subject is hard, particularly if you’re buying it for a grandchild or friend’s child. So we have to keep it simple.

4. Asset creation

Making a book based on the letters of child’s name means we have to create 26 separate segments, for every letter of their name. All of these segments are mini stories in their own right. And lots of kids have repeat letters in their names. Like Emmanuelle. That’s three Es, two Ms and two Ls. So we need to make much, much more than 26 segments. More like 60. That’s 120 separate illustrations. Plus diversity, hair and skin colour. The permutations are phenomenal. The amount of actual work, writing and drawing, is spectacular.

6. Iteration

Because we print on demand, we can change the words and pictures in our books as often as we like. So if customers make suggestions or have comments, we can act on them. But this then presents the question: Should we act on them? At what point does customer preference begin to overtake creative integrity? It’s a fine balance, and one that traditional publishing doesn’t have to deal with.

Okay, so making personalised books is hard. It takes ages, presents unique storytelling challenges, requires a whole load of UX and technology to make it possible, and is generally really quite hard to pull off. So, why do it?

Because when a personalised book works, when it’s done properly, really properly, then it makes children feel extraordinary. They gasp, smile, laugh, marvel at it. And it makes books and reading magical, really magical, and hopefully instills a genuine love for the written word, and all the possibilities that reading can open up.

We’re lucky enough to sell directly to customers, and so we know that children love our books, and make them feel special, because their parents tell us.

And that makes us feel kind of special, too.

David Cadji-Newby, Lead Writer at Lost My Name.

We’re always looking for talent at Lost My Name — if you’re interested in working with us, add yourself to Creative Talent Pool.

Join us on Dec 1 for Strange Tales — an evening of unconventional storytelling at LMNHQ.