{"id":5016,"date":"2010-01-22T14:48:29","date_gmt":"2010-01-22T19:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=2407"},"modified":"2025-08-01T22:51:40","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T03:51:40","slug":"free-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/free-agency\/","title":{"rendered":"Free agency"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mormon publishing is a small world, but since I only hover on the outskirts of the community as a fiction writer who is Mormon and not as a writer of Mormon fiction (albeit I have Mormon characters), I don\u2019t have much invested in the state of the Mormon art.<\/p>\n<p>Currently I\u2019m involved in a <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20100122154124\/http:\/\/latest.mormonletters.org\/post\/2010\/01\/17\/More-on-Messages-and-Agendas.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">discussion on the Association for Mormon Letters blog<\/a> that led to these comments:<\/p>\n<p>Author <a href=\"http:\/\/www.annettelyon.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Annette Lyon<\/a> said:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"normal\"><p>Angela also hit it right on the head when she said that it\u2019s a bit tricky naming names and titles when you\u2019re one of the LDS writers yourself. It was a different story before I was part of that group. It\u2019s easy to praise, but this is a tiny sandbox. An offhanded remark can make an enemy, so imagine if I were to give an honest review of that other book. Yeah. Let\u2019s just say I don\u2019t dare.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Author Lisa Torcasso Downing said:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"normal\"><p>Like Angela, I\u2019m hesitant to criticize other writers\u2014and their publishers\u2014because a) who am I to talk? and b) I need those publishers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There was a level of pathos there that I don\u2019t feel that deeply with unpublished writers of work aimed for the national market, and not a niche one, and <strong><em>such<\/em><\/strong> a niche one. Actually, it was the \u201cI need those publishers\u201d that made me hurt.<\/p>\n<p>I can understand Annette\u2019s position, as she\u2019s established and seems to do very well within the niche. But this is what I want to say to Lisa et al: You do <strong><em>not<\/em><\/strong> need those publishers.<\/p>\n<p>Look around. eBooks, podcasts, print-on-demand, serial fiction blogs. The landscape is changing drastically and at breathtaking speed.<\/p>\n<p>My question is: Could you do <strong><em>worse<\/em><\/strong> on your own? Really?<\/p>\n<p>Just think about it. Please.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mormon publishing is a small world, but since I only hover on the outskirts of the community as a fiction writer who is Mormon and not as a writer of Mormon fiction (albeit I have Mormon characters), I don\u2019t have much invested in the state of the Mormon art. Currently I\u2019m involved in a discussion [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[543,534,530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-molit","category-reviewing","category-self-publishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5016"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5016"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17449,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5016\/revisions\/17449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}