Robert Young

A writing milestone. My first book of fiction has now been published! Who Stinks? is picture book story about a bear who wakes up in the spring and smells something bad. Very bad. He stomps out of his cave and around the forest blaming everything he can find: a mouse, a snake, a blackbird, even a tree! In the end, it’s the wind who helps the bear discover who the culprit really is.

I wrote this story a while back – 1986. That’s twenty-six years ago! So, what’s taken so long for it to finally get published? Who knows? You can call it luck. Or timing. I think it was both those, plus a big dose of persistence. What else would make me keep sending it out all those years no matter how many rejection letters I got (and I got a WHOLE LOT!).

Some of the rejections had a personal spark to them (“a funny idea,” “good humor,” “we think kids would like it.”) and those helped me put it out to more than fifty publishers. My agent liked it and sent it to many more. A couple tastes, but no bites.

I could have just let it go, like I’ve done with so many other projects. But this book was different. And, I was getting positive feedback on it. Not just from editors, either. I created a large (11” x 17”) copy of the book, complete with illustrations I had done with the help from my five-year-old son. When I did author visits, I took the book along and read it to the kindergarten classes. The kids loved it, and the teachers would invariably say, “Why isn’t this published?” and I would reply, “I don’t know.”

And then there was the contest run by Writer’s Digest. I entered the story one year and was pleasantly surprised that it won third place in the Children’s Fiction division. Buoyed by that good news, I started sending it out to publishers once more. And again, no luck.

In 2011 I hooked up with E-Readia to digitize another book I had written. The publisher was excited about my work and asked about other titles I had available. Enter Who Stinks? He loved it, maybe as much as I did. No, of course not. Who could? But he liked it enough to offer a contract and an illustrator. Deal!
Since the signing, the children’s book part of the company has become Bushbaby Press (www.bushbaby.com).

So, what have I learned from this 26 year experience? Nothing profound, really. I already knew that persistence can pay off, I was aware that the market changes over time, and I had lots of experiences in frustration dealing with publishers. The most important thing I got from this experience is the idea that if you write something you like, do something with it, even if publishers don’t want to partner with you. In this case, I created my own copy of the book (complete with amateur home-made illustrations) and shared it with lots of kids. And they liked it! So, to have his book actually published by a real publisher is just the icing on the cake.

I’ll enjoy the icing.