We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Victoria Smith a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Victoria , thanks for joining us today. Let’s jump right into how you came up with the idea?
It was 2016. I was live-streaming my brother-in-law, Alex, and his disabled son, Harrison, coming in to the home straight of a gargantuan Ironman triathlon in Denmark. They had been swimming, biking and running alongside one another all day. It was dark and floodlit with flashes of silver blankets draped over exhausted competitors. Most finishers had finished. I caught glimpses of my husband, Alex’s brother, cheering amidst throngs of spectators, willing the father-son duo on to the finish line. The pain indelibly marked on Alex’s face. My nephew, Harrison, battle weary in his custom-built buggy. Their ‘why’? To fund-raise. To support cutting-edge science in the fight to find a cure for the life limiting disease that Harrison was born with – to take Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy by the roots.
Having raised money for their charity ‘Harrison’s Fund’, doing a half marathon and the odd coffee morning, it didn’t seem enough. I have always written as part of my work. I love writing. I love the escapism of writing. And I love that an idea for a story can render you incapable of doing anything until you have splurged your creative urgency and put pen to paper. I mean, what else in life has that hold over you – the ability to steal you away from everyone and everything around you. Pure unadulterated self-indulgence.
Alex and Harrison were the lighter fluid for the first picture book idea I had. As I watched them through tears, finally coming to a standstill at the end of their race, something started to percolate. It’s one thing writing a story though. You edit and re-edit until you hope you have something worth sharing. What next? In my case, nothing, for 2yrs. It was too expensive to produce, too expensive to get illustrated, and I was clueless as to how to go about it all. Then I learned about ‘Kickstarter’. I went for it with naive optimism. We hit our target and my first picture book, ‘Big H and Little h Dog’, came to be! It’s a book for charity funded by charity! It tells Alex and Harrison’s Ironman story…with some artistic license. I self-published it in 2020. It’s hard selling books. We’ve sold around 300 paperbacks and 265 kindle ebooks have been downloaded from the US, the UK, Brazil, Canada, India, Australia and Germany. The book raised a few hundred pounds and it raised awareness about the cruel disease that my nephew lives with. It’s out there in the world and it was such a worthwhile endeavour. It still sells the odd copy here and there. I wish it was more. I wish it had an Amazon best seller banner to help it fly!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’m a hobby writer. Never destined to be a household author; never destined to be a full-time writer, making a decent living out of it. And that sits fine and dandy. I get so much out of my hobby! I did a Sport Science degree many years ago. Got a 1st. Worked in physical activity promotion in one guise or another for umpteen years. Got married to Mr Smith. Had two delightful children. Ran like Forest Gump…for a hobby. Played a lot of competitive squash…for a hobby. Painted furniture…for a hobby. And nowadays I write…for a hobby, and I play Padel tennis…for a hobby. My day job mostly involves linking scientific references to pharmaceutical slide decks – bit of a random one, but it’s still in the health and education space, and I like that I’m a small part of a big cog that ultimately improves the patient experience and disease outcomes. I’m self-employed which is great, as it means I have more time for my hobbies and more time to create more picture books! ;-)
Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
Did I mention how clueless I was when I embarked on my first picture book?! I think we all are though. I see comments from newbies in FB groups and I stop to acknowledge how far I’ve come. How much knowledge I’ve accrued without even realising it. We learn by doing. We learn through necessity or we stand still. We all like to feel accomplished, especially when we are devoting significant time and energy to something. Even when it’s a hobby ;-). It really is an amazing time to self-publish. There’s a wealth of free and paid-for expertise at our literary fingertips. Seek them out. Go get yourself a trusted inner circle of self-pub friends – those who will be kind, yet honest, those who will be your cheerleader, those ho will applaud and commiserate your triumphs and flops. I have mine and a few of us got to meet in-person for the first time this year – it was wonderful! We felt like we’d known one another for years and I know we all feel very lucky. I have gained truck loads of publishing wisdom from a whole heap of difference sources, but here are the free and paid offerings that have helped me the most at difference stages:
Amy Sparkes – https://www.storygodmother.co.
Dave Chesson – https://kindlepreneur.com/
David Gaughran – https://davidgaughran.com/
Eevie Jones – https://www.eevijones.com/
Mark Dawson – https://selfpublishingformula.
The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators – https://www.scbwi.org/
The Golden Egg Academy – https://goldeneggacademy.co.
Write Mentor – https://write-mentor.com/
Oh and let’s not forgot good old YouTube – when in doubt, there’s a video for that…!
Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?
My latest picture book was published in May 2023. It’s called ‘Sue from Class Two has a Problem with Poo’. The idea for the story came from my own children, and all of their friends! All of whom would refrain from doing a school poo as if their life depended on it. I started to do a bit of research and soon realised that this was a torpedo of a problem! I set about writing a story to cleverly encourage children to use stinky school toilets by making them tinkle with laughter, while weaving in simple strategies they could use at school or in public toilets. An early draft of the book had been very well received by my SCBWI critique group at the time and it made Round Two of the Write Mentor picture book awards. I also won a charity critique by the brilliant Amy Sparkes for which I submitted Sue. By the time I had worked in this wealth of feedback, I knew I had my best story so far! But I couldn’t afford an illustrator. I’m just a hobby writer after all ;-). Enter Dr. Smith. My husband. With an A’ Level in Art and an uncanny ability to effortlessly recreate any image he sees, I cannily convinced him he was the one! Set as his goal for 2022, he finished the last spread over the New Year. I love his style! It’s so fun; perfect for the story-line and he produced the perfect Sue-poo! The icing on the cake for Sue came from a speculative email I sent to a wonderful charity called ERIC (https://eric.org.uk/), a charity dedicated to improving children’s bowel and bladder health. They adored Sue and eagerly offered to contribute to the back-matter in the book and to provide a review quote for the cover. I couldn’t believe it! When you do your research and send these type of emails out, you don’t really expect much in return, so I was bowled over by their kindness and enthusiasm for the story. They are even stocking Sue on their website! So my advice is – do your research, does your book align with the work of others? If it does, be brave! It might be just what they are looking for to help raise awareness for a similar goal.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.victoriasmithchildrensbooks.com/
- Instagram: @bongtreebooks
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/bongtreebooks
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/victoria-smith-2395391b
- Twitter: @bongtreebooks
Image Credits
Harrison’s Fund (for Ironman related images).