Indie Author Interview: C.M. Gillott

Interview with C.M. Gillott - Author of the Children's Adventure Book Nelson 'n' Deck and Friends: How the Adventures Began..

Author C.M. Gillott is the owner of Star789 Limited, a company setup with the aims of making London, UK fun for kids - with the Nelson ‘n’ Deck and Friends series of children’s adventure stories set in London. Star789 are supporting children’s charities and the fantastic work they do with the proceeds from the company.

The original idea for the Nelson ‘n’ Deck and Friends series of books occurred to Chris in late 1999/early 2000. The series is based on the author’s very fond childhood memories of visiting the many wonderful sights of London year round, with his parents, grandparents and close family.

Interview with C.M. Gillott

Author C.M. Gillott

Alan Kealey (Indie Author News): What is your (writing) background?
C.M. Gillott: I started writing for fun as a hobby in late 1999 / early 2000 and then later decided that I wanted to officially publish my Nelson ‘n’ Deck and Friends series of children’s books. I wrote the first book in the series – “How the Adventures Began” – and then left the story on the shelf collecting dust for 9 years until 2009 before getting it ready for publishing.
It was one of those things that I wanted to do in case I regretted not doing it later in life.

Who are your favorite writers, your favorite books, and who or what are your writing influences?
When I was younger I enjoyed reading the Famous Five adventures by Enid Blyton.

More recently I have enjoyed reading Dan Brown’s novels – I could not put Angels and Demons down until I finished it, which was not until very early one morning!

When did you first know that you wanted to be a writer?
Back in late 1999.

Tell us about your writing process. Do you have a writing routine?

My writing routine is quite varied and I try to use as much ‘dead-time’ to come up with new storyline ideas and characters. For example while on the train into London for work or during a lunch break.

What do you find easiest about writing? What the hardest?
The easiest part for me is coming up with the framework or outline for the story. The hardest part is filling in the ‘gaps’ within the framework so that the story flows and there is continuity from start to finish.

C.M. Gillott, please tell us a little about your Book-Series 'Nelson 'n' Deck and Friends'.
The Nelson ‘n’ Deck and Friends children’s adventure stories are all about helping to make learning about London, England fun for children, families, as well as visitors to London. There are full colour illustrations on every other page throughout the book to bring the story to life.
The storyline is about 2 children - Jack and Keira - who reluctantly leave their home in the countryside to move to London with their parents, when their Dad gets a new job in the City. On their first day they stumble across some magical new Friends that they find they can interact with; NELSON - a funny-looking pigeon, and DECK – a big, red, open-topped Double-Decker London Routemaster bus.
The first book in our series ‘How the Adventures Began’ introduces most of the core characters of the series plus how and why they meet…to set the scene for the follow-up books in the series. I have subtly integrated key facts about London into the storyline, so children will learn about London without being told.
For any adults reading the story, I have given most of supporting characters names that are play-on-words for who the characters are or what job they do – to make the stories more fun to read. It also helps the children to associate the characters easily.

Nelson 'n' Deck and Friends: How the Adventures Began (C.M. Gillott)

Click to Read an Excerpt

What inspired you to write the book?
There were a couple of things that inspired me to write the book.
The first was that I was constantly being asked to donate money to sponsor people for various things they were doing for charity. I was thinking of a way to do this on a regular basis, without necessarily having to keep finding the money myself from my monthly pay. I thought that if I could write some books and publish them, I could have a way to constantly give to charity – focusing on children’s charities.
The second reason was that I received a postcard from my uncle which was from London and had a picture of a Red London Routemaster bus and a Black London Taxi parked side-by-side at some traffic lights. I wondered what the 2 vehicles would say if they could talk to each other and hence DECK the bus and CAB the Black London Taxi (introduced during book 1) were born. Nelson was added later on.

Who do you see as your target audience and where can we buy the book?
The ideal target audience is children aged 5-9 years old, although people have bought the book for grandchildren as young as 2 and enjoyed seeing the full colour illustrations throughout.

How would you describe the success of your book so far?
The book has been very well received.
It is currently being sold across most major book stores and in the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden, London (which is one of the locations within the story)

I have had some great references from customers which can be seen on my website at www.star789.co.uk which include:

“As the father of two pre-school age children, I was delighted that the characters bring to life the wonderfully diverse city that London has always been and remains to this day.”
Mark Field, MP for Cities of London & Westminster

“Our 8-year old daughter, Carys, thought your Nelson ‘n’ Deck book was Awesome!…whilst giving it two thumbs up! She is now asking us “When are we going to visit London?” Good luck with the book & its many sequels!” by Angie

“I really enjoyed this book. I liked Nelson the pigeon the best. I had not been to London before I read this book and I have since been with my mummy and daddy who showed me Nelson’s Column – which was great. I learned a lot from this book and can’t wait for the next book.” by Joe Orrell – aged 7

On Amazon, a School Teacher gave the book 5 stars and their review was:

“Absolutely fantastic for teaching my class of six- and seven-year-olds about London. It explains about so many "real" things in the context of an interesting story.”

How long did it take it to write the book?
If you consider the total elapsed time, I would have to say 9 years from 2000 to 2009. In terms of actual writing time, I would say 2-3 months in total.

"I initially made the mistake to self-publish through a company called Authorhouse."

Please, tell us where you self-published the book.
I initially made the mistake to self-publish through a company called Authorhouse. They were a company that took lots of money from me and delivered very little when compared to other ways of getting books published independently. I have only found this out subsequently and it has been a very steep learning curve.

Once the book was published with Authorhouse, I began to realise I had made a massive mistake in choosing them. The reasons were:
•The initial setup process was expensive, because it also included promotion in Borders Book Stores (which went bust around that time!) so I could not have that promotion.
•I was charged for time they spent fixing mistakes they had made during the book formatting process.
•The book price was way too high for the target market I wanted to reach. I wanted the book price to be UK£6.99 as a Maximum but their starting point was UK£7.99 minimum – with companies like Amazon, etc. then onward selling for UK£11.99 which was crazy.
•My buy price per book was very high and my cut or margin was very small and since I wanted to be able to use the money to help children’s charities, I felt very restricted.
•In addition, the postage they charged to ship books from their US colour printers (they did not have UK colour printers) was as much as the book price itself – giving yet another reason to turn people off from buying my book. I subsequently found out that it did not cost them anything to transfer the books from the USA to the UK (they were charged nothing from the printers), so in fact they were also profiting from the postage costs.
•To add insult to injury and against my better judgment I used their marketing services (which had to be paid for upfront) to promote the book, but found them to be very poor at marketing and I could do a much better job at promoting than what I received from them.

At this time, early 2010 I was very disillusioned and was thinking that maybe I had made a huge mistake pursuing a dream of mine. I was nursing a loss of several thousands of pounds which was self-funded and all I had to show for it was 100 copies of my book and a very simple email promotional template that looked like it took 10 minutes to knock together!

I decided that I would attend the 2010 London Book Fair and by chance stumbled across a stand for another publisher called Troubador Publishing. I spoke with them and found out that things were much simpler and more aligned with my original expectations around price and margin made per book. Their colour printed books looked much better than the one from Authorhouse and so I decided then to migrate across to them and create a 2nd edition of the book under their publishing imprint.

How smooth went the self-publishing process? Any issues? What are things to look for when self-publishing a book?
In addition to the points raised above in just getting the publisher right, I had major challenges with the new colour printers who were supposed to be experts in producing colour books. This was not an issue with Troubador – just one of the printers they used.

I ordered an initial batch of 500 books and the first lot turned up as Saddle Stitch (with Staples down the spine) rather than being perfect-bound finished as I and Troubador had requested. These were promptly sent back and I had to wait for several weeks for a second batch to arrive.

When the second batch of 500 books arrived, a large proportion of the colour illustrations had bled into the text pages opposite each illustration which looked like they had been printed and squashed together before the ink could dry. It took hours for four of us to go through each book individually and find those that were ok and those that had to go back. A large number of the books were bad, so I had to send them back.
Again I had to wait weeks for the new books to arrive and that third batch was thankfully ok.

I am not now using those color printers for my books!!

Did you hire an editor and/or Cover Designer for your book?
I did not need to hire an editor or cover designer for my book since the cover was designed by my brilliant illustrator – Stacey Roscoe – www.staceyroscoe.co.uk . I got someone to proof-read my book before submitting for publishing.

"Watch out for lots of people happy to take your money and deliver very little in return."

Can you give some tips for other Indie Authors regarding the writing and self-publishing process?
Here are just a few of my experiences and lessons learned:

•Watch out for lots of people happy to take your money and deliver very little in return. Those companies have acquired the name ‘Vanity Publishing Houses’ and so it is well worth doing a lot of research first and speaking with references to save yourself lots of money, time, heartache and stress.

•If you are publishing children’s colour books, the quality of the illustrations is very important to bring the stories to life and keep children interested in story.

•Also it is worth investing in a book trailer to promote the book – I had one completed and the interest has rocketed over the last few months since I released it. You can capture the imagination very quickly within a short space of time.

As an example of what is possible…my book trailer is here http://vimeo.com/45732253

•I was also say that social media is a very good and cheap way to connect with your target audience such as Twitter or Facebook and the like. It is easy to include links to your website, facebook page, and book trailers for people to see your books.

•An author is the best person to talk about their story and put the necessary passion behind it.

Are you working on another book project? Can you tell us a little about it?
Yes, I am currently working on book 2 in the Nelson ‘n’ Deck and Friends series which will be out in due course. I have some new characters including a nemesis and his henchmen for Nelson ‘n’ Deck and a new Adventure for them.

"Writing and publishing is a journey."

Are you planning to move forward as an Indie author or are you looking forward to have one of your next books to be traditionally published?
The plan at the moment is to continue as an Indie Author. If a publishing house approached me then I would be happy to chat further. Writing and publishing is a journey. I have learned a lot along the way so far and will continue to enjoy the journey in the future – whatever it may bring!

Where do you see the book market in 5 or 10 years? Will there be only eBooks and will book stores disappear like record stores disappeared?
The book market started to change with the advent of companies like Amazon arriving on the scene with their convenience for customers in quickly getting the books they want delivered straight to them. The net effect has been that traditional bookshop sellers have been constantly struggling to compete with them and some have gone bust. Add to that the explosion of eBooks into the marketplace giving even greater convenience and the paper and hardback books sales declines have spoken for themselves.

I think it is a shame, because there is personal & special experience in receiving a crisp new book to read as a gift (which is more difficult to replicate on an electronic device)

I think there will still be a market for physical books to sit alongside eBooks, but it looks as though it will be a much smaller percentage of the overall market share than it is today.

I have converted my first Nelson ‘n’ Deck book into eBooks as well as the hardcopy paperback versions. On the Apple iPad, for example, the colour illustrations really jump out with the backlit screen. Also with eBooks you can enhance them – in my Apple iBook version you can click on most of the illustrations while reading the story and if your device is connected to the internet it will launch a relevant London website related to where you are in the story. This is so children can learn more about London while they read the book – plus the eBook becomes a mini-guide to London to refer back to later on.

My Apple iBook version can be downloaded from here:
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/nelson-n-deck-and-friends/id429623670?mt=11

My Amazon Kindle eBook version can be downloaded from here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nelson-Deck-Friends-Adventures-ebook/dp/B0055T3GR0/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1312189962&sr=1-1

Do you write full-time or do you have a day job?
I write part-time in my spare time (what little I have with a busy family with 3 young girls!!)
I have a day job which keeps the wolf from the door by paying the monthly bills and helps fund my book writing hobby…for now at least!

How can readers connect with you?
Thank you for taking the time to read my interview and I hope you found it informative and useful. [See Contact Links below]

Thank you very much for the Interview, C.M. Gillott

About the Book Nelson 'n' Deck and Friends: How the Adventures Began

Nelson 'n' Deck and Friends (C.M. Gillott)

Click to Read an Excerpt

Two children reluctantly move from the countryside to live in London, when their Dad gets a new job in the City.

On arrival in London, they go with their Grandpa to visit the London Transport Museum (he is the caretaker there).

While he is locking up for the evening, they go sneaking around the Museum and they meet some magical new friends there – Nelson and Deck.