The Pensters kicked off the 2018-2019 season on Saturday. A great group was in attendance for speakers Suzanne Hudson and Joe Formichella’s presentation “Cutting Out the Mad Middle Men.” The duo spoke about their experiences as authors in a traditional publishing system and how it led them to move to self-publishing.

“Everything we all assumed or understood about traditional publishers and what they do for writers is dwindling by the day. There is very, very little they do that you can’t do,” stated Joe. During the “How” portion of their talk, he encouraged writers not to settle for good enough. With the technology available now, it’s possible to have things exactly the way you want them.

According to Joe, the single biggest obstacle is authors feeling like they don’t know how to do self-publishing. The resources are out there, however. “The beauty of the process is It’s not hard to find out how to do it,” he reminded the audience.

The pair wrapped up their session with an informative Q&A session.

Submitted by Jessica Trippe