Winslow Nicholas began writing at an early age, film scripts, plays, science fiction, and children’s books, when he was about 17 years of age. In the early 1980’s he entered into the world of children’s story tapes (on cassette).
One of his first releases was a children's story adventure “Pineapple in Candyland” (Barbara Short), which was narrated by TV Personality Sally James, famous for the Saturday morning children’s TV show, Tiswas, which starred the raven-haired goddess James and, most famously, Lenny Henry, together with presenter of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Chris Tarrant.
The late showbiz wizard, Bob Monkhouse, was first offered the job of reading the children's story, Pineapple in Candyland, but his agent baulked at the fee which was offered at the time, stating that it was much too low! (I was a poor student! What did he expect?) Subsequently, after some tough negotiating, Sally James agreed to narrate the talking book. Apparently she accepted a fee which was slightly higher than that first offered to Mr Monkhouse!
Later on in the early 1990’s whilst talking with the director of Foyles Bookshop in London, about a window display for the storytapes, he suggested to Winslow to get into diet and health books, as they were big business at the time. By the mid 1990’s Winslow had written his first serious book for publication “A Caribbean Diet.” His literary agent almost secured a deal with a major publisher, but the industry was going through some changes at the time, and then his agent decided to join the QE2 liner and concentrate on her book selling side of the business on the ship.
This prompted him to try this publishing thing himself. He printed 5,000 copies of A Caribbean Diet, secured a distribution deal with Exel Logistics (UK), who managed to spread the book around, although rather thinly indeed... one copy to waterstones, a couple to W H Smith etc,. Eventually, Exel had a shake-up and takeover... He was left with a pallet load of books, unceremoniously dumped in his front garden, outside his flat. A large number were donated to Great Ormond Street Children’s Charity, and Oxfam, and others sold on via mail order.
Later on that year he completed his second book, “Shape Up with Karatics,” a diet and exercise book based on a system of exercises from his favourite sport, Karate, (as he was a Black Belt, European Champion at the time). He wasn’t about to repeat the same costly mistakes of the past, so he decided to abandon costly print and enter into the cheaper world of ebooks.
For the past few years Winslow has been writing and selling his books through independent publishing platforms such as Smashwords and Createspace on Amazon. He has written 10 books to date (some will be available from Smashwords soon), and he is currently working on his 11th book.
