In hopes to spread the word about her recently released book, as well as to share her personal accomplishment with her hometown, native girl Rachel Wood maiden name Palmer will hold a signing for the first in her young adult adventure trilogy set on the high seas.
Treachery at Martinique Isle is the culmination of Wood’s 13 years of fiction writing. Based off of characters that she and her cousin invented when they were children playing a make believe game, Wood made it into a story.
“It’s a pretty difficult industry to break into,” she said, and the publication of the book took a long time from writing it to its in-store availability.
Initially finishing the manuscript when she was only 19, the 2004 Lakeview High School graduate decided to self publish in as she was making her way through a business administration degree.
“It was a good experience, but there were things that I didn’t like about self-publishing,” she said. “For example, I’m rotten at self-marketing.”
Wood said she found it hard to sell herself to both sellers and potential readers.
With charming humility, she said, “If you’re the only one talking about how good you are, then you are left wondering if it’s true.”
After about two or three years of sloughing through those difficulties, she decided to look for an actual publisher.
Wishing to make it more professional, as well as allowing the book to be legitimately edited, Wood went in the direction of finding an agent to represent her.
It led largely to more bumps in the road as she found a multitude of websites and services that cost too much money and did not deliver exactly as they promised.
After six months or so, her mother-in-law asked her why she didn’t just go to the publisher directly.
“And that’s actually what I did,” Wood said.
Investigating companies that were in line with the genre and audience that she hoped to target, she found Tate Publishing & Enterprise.
“I went straight to them and submitted three things,” she said.