Print Run Podcast

Print Run Podcast

Print Run is a podcast created and hosted by Laura Zats and Erik Hane. Its aim is simple: to have the conversations surrounding the book and writing industries that too often are glossed over by conventional wisdom, institutional optimism, and false seriousness. We’re book people, and we want to examine the questions that lie at the heart of that life: why do books, specifically, matter? In a digital world, what cultural ground does book publishing still occupy? Whether it’s trends in the queries from writers that hit our inboxes or the social ramifications of an industry that pays so little being based in Manhattan, we’re here for it. Probably to laugh at it and call it names, but here for it nonetheless. Print Run is the happy-hour conversation after a long day at a catalog launch; it’s the bottle of wine you drink most of on a Tuesday when the manuscripts are no good. We’re for writers, for publishers, for anyone who’s opened a book and wanted to know—really know—what goes into getting the damn thing made. Join us. We’ll talk about the worst sex scene we’ve ever read and wonder aloud about how millennials will affect the books of the future. We’ll figure out why Jonathan Franzen wants to replace your child with a penguin and whether or not that penguin will be buying hardcovers when he grows up.

Episodes

Episode 187—Goblins in the Source Code

June 12, 2026 • 56 mins
This week we catch up on two pieces that caught our eye: one on the modernization of older children’s literature to match contemporary culture, and another on how every LLM chatbot keeps telling stories featuring the same vaguely aggrieved fictional guy. It’s weird! The goblins are closing in!
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Episode 186—Middlemen, featuring Laura B. McGrath

May 6, 2026 • 61 mins
This week we are thrilled to bring you an interview with Laura B. McGrath, whose new book MIDDLEMEN offers the largest-scale historical look at the field of literary agenting that we’ve ever seen. We talked to Laura about her experience talking to agents for the book, how being a debut writer herself has changed her view of publishing, and how what she has her eye on as publishing heads toward an uncertain future. This is one...
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Episode 185—Mahjong on the Telephone

April 16, 2026 • 41 mins
In light of the recent controversy around Helen DeWitt winning and then losing the lucrative Windham-Campbell Prize, we talk about the dying era of the true literary eccentric, the artistic costs of writers being online, and making room for genuine artistic and intellectual curiosity in an age when every idle moment is filled with an obligation to produce optimized digital marketing content. Which artists get to be offline weirdos,...
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Episode 184—The Hanger Games

February 27, 2026 • 43 mins
This week we talk about the shifting nature of the politics/culture nonfiction book market–who do publishers imagine their readers to be? How does the broader political horizon change which sorts of books become “sellable” in this category? And most importantly, how have the last few months of violent occupation in the Twin Cities changed the way we see what a “politics book” should even be or do? If ...
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Episode 183—The Only Genre Is My Feelings

January 9, 2026 • 31 mins
After checking for a few minutes about the ICE occupation of the Twin Cities, we answer a reader question about genre as relates to Karen Russell’s THE ANTIDOTE, a novel that has both historical AND fantasy elements but which usually only gets talked about as “literary.” Is that a slight to fantasy? Does it show us something about the creation and marketing of genre? Are Memory Witches real? All this and more! Joi...
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Episode 182—Print Run Goes Nano

October 24, 2025 • 18 mins
Episode 182—Print Run Goes Nano by Erik Hane and Laura Zats
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Episode 181—Tote Bag Mindset

September 12, 2025 • 49 mins
This week we evaluate the pervasive notion that “literary” or “challenging” fiction is going away, and what that means for our reading culture more broadly in age where the AI slop is only becoming more prevalent. It’s a convo about genre, category, selling versus writing categories, and much more. Join us!
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Episode 180—Can Agents Read?

August 1, 2025 • 56 mins
This week we took a look at a substack piece (link below!) that argued that literary agents can’t or don’t read well, as a jumping-off point to discuss the big picture of the query process, the ways we sort through a high volume of submissions, when art becomes boring business emails, and much more. We can read, we promise! The piece in question is here: https://antipodes.substack.com/p/literary-agents-dont-read-how-i-...
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Episode 179—The Psychologisode

June 27, 2025 • 53 mins
This week, Laura got mad enough at Erik’s approach to his creative life that she’s devoting an episode to psychoanalyzing him and his writing practices. What could go wrong!
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Episode 178—The One About (Un)bound(less)

June 6, 2025 • 59 mins
In light of the recent revelations about Unbound/Boundless’s failure to pay their debts to their authors, we talked about what went wrong, what flawed publishing impulse these mistakes come from, and the importance of publishing companies not pursuing growth at all costs. We also yell a little bit about AI. Come unpack the horrors with us!
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Episode 177—The Jimmies, The Rock, The Tariffs

April 2, 2025 • 44 mins
This week…. Well folks there’s not much to say other than that we were pretty loose, given the general state of things in both publishing and beyond. We talk about MrBeast getting eight figures for a book, Dwayne The Rock Johnson being a True Crime Girlie, and the tariffs that promise to upend the publishing industry. Come hang out and blow off some steam with us.
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Episode 176—Co-ops as the Way Forward

March 19, 2025 • 35 mins
This week we look at the announcement of a fascinating new agreement between eight small publishers that revolves around sharing shipping costs as a way to discuss the concept of cooperation in our industry; what do co-op initiatives like this do for the survival of independent publishing–or agenting, or writing, or anything else outside the industry’s largest corporate structures? We talk about how cooperation actually...
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Episode 175—What We Owe Each Other

February 19, 2025 • 67 mins
In response to an excellent listener question, today we’re talking about how writers can approach asking potential agents about how they might handle specific aspects of their lives–whether that’s gender or sexual identity, disability, pregnancy or possible pregnancy, and much more–that could affect their publishing journey. We are in an age where all of us are growing increasingly vulnerable in different wa...
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Episode 174—The Subgenre is YOU

February 6, 2025 • 52 mins
This week we use one of publishing’s favorite new portmanteaus–romantasy–to talk about the fluid nature of genre and subgenre, and discuss the ways in which these endless classifications can help bring new readers into a given category of book, as well as what drawbacks occur when we get more and more specific with our book taxonomy. We arrive at a key conclusion: the thing being categorized is not the book, but r...
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Episode 173—The Manuscript Wish List at the End of the World

January 23, 2025 • 49 mins
We don’t need to tell you that the world feels pretty dark right now. The question then becomes: as creatives, as publishing people, as writers, readers, agents, whatever–what are we looking for to get us through? This episode we talk about what we’re hoping to see from and get out of art and publishing this next stretch, when all feels lost but we’re forging ahead anyway. Join us while we look for the light...
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Episode 172—The End of the Social Media Marketing Era

January 16, 2025 • 48 mins
This week we talk about the functional death of social media as a promotional tool in the publishing industry. Now that we all agree that these platforms are actively corrosive to not only our body politic but literary culture specifically, where do we go next? What forms of cultural production might actually get people excited about books again, once we detach ourselves from the Slop Machines? We explore that vision and more. Join...
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Episode 171—Summer, Again

July 25, 2024 • 43 mins
It’s time for the annual Print Run Summer Check-In, where we list out all the ways we’re both keeping it together and losing our marbles. Summer is strange time in publishing, and it leads us to a conversation on deep work versus shallow, frenetic work, how we manage our interior creative selves in relation to the job, and the chaos that is sure to come this fall. Join us!
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Episode 170—A Culture of Mistrust

July 3, 2024 • 56 mins
On the heels of some recent discourse on the trust between querying writers and agents managing submission piles, we go long on the culture of trust–or lack thereof–that exists between these two parts of the publishing industry, why it occurs, and what could fix it. We talk about the nature of ideas and copyright, the structures of the modern literary agency, publishing culture, and much more. It’s a fun and fiery...
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Episode 169—We’re Just a Bunch of Guys

March 19, 2024 • 48 mins
In light of yet another round of agent chaos over the weekend, we got together to talk about the information climate in publishing at large, the ways in which even well-intentioned agents can contribute to gatekeeping and access issues for writers. In an age when there are more agents, writers, and information about agents and writers than ever before, everyone could stand to examine whether they’re making publishing a less a...
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Episode 168—You Don’t Have To Sit There

February 29, 2024 • 44 mins
This week we get a little bit mad at the Forced Waiting that publishing imposes on all of us, and it builds to a call to arms: you–writers, agents, editors, whoever–don’t just have to wait quietly for progress to happen to you. No matter your situation in publishing, you can get out there and make something happen as a person with agency and the owner of your own career and path. We address the flipside too, of co...
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