Print Run Podcast

As we come back from a few weeks off, we spent this episode getting caught up on all the times people in the book world got mad recently, including the Nora Roberts-Tomi Adeyemi kerfuffle (and spinoff argument!), a poet who tattooed a plagiarized verse on her forearm, and people getting mad at JK Rowling for—let’s see here—having a room in which she writes. So basically it’s another normal week of...

This week we pay respects to Marvel Comics’ Stan Lee, who died this week at age 95. Then we get into one of the most pervasive yet undiscussed topics in all of publishing: failure. Trying things that don’t work is the signature trait of nearly every facet of the industry, and yet it’s so rarely brought to light in the way successes understandably are. We talk about how failure has informed our res...

Folks . . . The celebs, there are so many. This week--after digging into a delightful historical episode of a book-theft epidemic in Australia—we explore the concept of celebrity book clubs and their effect on the publishing industry. How does the desire to land a book with Oprah or Reese Witherspoon or Jimmy Fallon change how certain projects get published? And what do those celebrities get, bran...

This week, after working through our thoughts on National Novel Writing Month (happy writing, everyone!), we discuss the intriguing critical response to the video game “Red Dead Redemption 2.” Apart from it being widely loved, people are specifically enjoying how difficult and tedious it is in spots--is this still an experience readers have with particularly large or difficult books? We talk about...

We’re back! Fresh off the both of us having our respective weddings, we get caught up quickly on the last few weeks of publishing news before diving into the topic of creative and literary burnout. When someone working in a creative field is feeling low energy, how might that affect their habits, or their reading tastes, or even the types of projects they choose to work on? In publishing, taste is...

We’ve got freshly announced National Book Award and Man Booker finalist lists to discuss, so we give our impressions on what we’re seeing, how these lists relates to the broad Book Conversation that’s been happening throughout the year, and how we feel the winners might shake out. It offers a nice foundation for our other topic, a look at a recent attempt by NYMag/Vulture to create an early twenty...

This week, we found a very strange new “writing residency” model that, while obviously dangerous in this instance, we feel could crop up more and more. The sheer precarity of the writing life is going to lead to different institutions offering “solutions” that at first might seem attractive, but must be watched closely. Also, in light of two book-tech-related stories from the past couple weeks, we...

This week, after swatting another terrible article about YA literature out of the sky, we talk about the perceived moral stands publishers are able with regard to “controversial” authors. Publishers often wait until the most obviously lucrative moment to support marginalized authors and their projects, and also refuse to cut bait with toxic authors until the last possible instant, when their hand...

This week we debut our new advice-column segment, where we try get a handle on the messiest book situations our listeners have found themselves in. We’ve got some critique-group quandaries this week, which felt like a good place to start. Also: please, please send us your messiest, stupidest, and most dramatic publishing-related qualms! Email the bird. Let the healing in. Special episodes for the...

Laura’s back from WorldCon, so we catch up by talking about all sorts of things, from the convention itself and the YA “soap controversy,” to the dangers of grifty politics books and everyone’s favorite book design feature, the deckled edge. A fun, free-flowing episode in which we’re mostly just happy to be back in the studio!

On the heels of recent publishing news as well as the response to NYT’s hiring of Sarah Jeong, this week’s show focuses on a phenomenon that is only going to get more common: bad-faith mobs appealing to power in an attempt to have writers or artists fired. We talk about how publishers and magazines should be prepared to respond to this sort of pernicious internet campaign, and how developing those...

This week, in the deepest valley of the summer doldrums, we mostly just catch up and talk about various things on our agenting plates: what we’re reading, how summer work in publishing is going, becoming a crusty lake monster in a canoe, and plenty more. Meandering and fun, because it’s hot out. Also, Laura gives a delightful curry recipe, which got inserted into this episode because . . . Because...

We dig into this week’s allegations of fraud in the agent world, as well as the problems with this year’s WorldCon. Both topics serve as a means of asking a larger question: on the front end of publishing, what are all our structures actually built on? The truth is that, between agents and authors looking to pair up before any publishing money gets involved, so much of this industry runs on integr...

Welcome, at long last, to Print Run’s first foray into Call of Cthulhu! In this preview episode, the two of us set the stage by creating the characters we’ll use to play through the game. In a revelation that will shock no one, it turns out Intern Kevin has a bunch of useless knowledge and no functional ability whatsoever. Meanwhile, Jane seems to have a ruthless combination of ambition and skill....

This week, we tackle a fundamental question of the writing life in our current political moment: should writing fiction help us escape realities for a while, or should it offer thoughtful engagement? The answer as always is layered and nuanced and multifold. We also answer a listener question about personal responsibility with regard to Amazon: if Amazon provides the best publishing route for a wr...

Just an abbreviated discussion this week, because you guys gave us so much to do! We are incredibly heartened by how much money you all raised for organizations fighting child separation on the border. You came together and raised nearly $1500, which is no small feat. Now we’ve gotta go do the query critiques in return, so this week is just a quick chat on how political issues like this should abs...

This week’s show takes a look at the subtle differences between categories like literary science fiction/fantasy and speculative fiction, first in terms of craft and then in terms of selling category. What we find is that those two spheres are separate: the way an author envisions their own work often doesn’t line up with how it’s sold. So what makes a story with speculative or otherworldly elemen...

This week we tackle an underlying, often silent argument put forth to writers by many different parties in publishing: that the money one might get from writing books should be considered unsustainable and an afterthought. How does this strange yet common thinking affect the industry as a whole, and how does it affect authors in less stable financial situations? Does it change the way an agent app...

Goodreads released a fascinating article about how the team behind Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere used the site to fuel the book’s rise to the bestseller list, so we dig into it and examine what surprised us about the data, what might be replicable for other books, and how tools like Goodreads work in conjunction with other publicity and marketing strategies in publishing. We also give an ex...

This week we hash out the latest updates to #cockygate, because Book Twitter will never stop and neither will we. We also spend some time on the major embezzlement case coming from Chuck Palahniuk’s agency; it’s a bizarre situation that once again leaves an agency’s authors footing the bill. Also, all of Erik’s queries are from David Brooks fans now, which he is THRILLED about. Join us!

In light of Romantic Times closing, we talk about how certain publishing institutions come to occupy indispensable spaces within the publishing community, and how part of moving the industry forward will involve understanding how those spaces work and adapting accordingly. It’s a convo about the roles we each play within the larger system, and what those roles can tell us about how we should imagi...

Things get a bit off the rails this week when a conversation about tabletop gaming eventually turns into us imagining what a publishing-themed D&D campaign might look like! Join us as we conjure up some characters and quests—I get to be Intern Kevin, I called it—and just generally get way too into the idea of a publishing RPG. (But also please will someone set this up with us?) In a more productiv...

We’re back and thank goodness, because tons has happened in the book world over the last couple weeks. First, we tackle the serious stuff—the latest set of abuse allegations against literary figures, including those leading to the cancellation of the 2018 Nobel Prize for literature. But then we take on the latest book-themed crackpot scheme: #cockygate, or one author’s attempt to trademark the wor...

This week—after spending a couple minutes chatting about the insanity of the dumb fight about misandry in publishing—we take a look at the recent industry conversation surround Pitch Wars and entrance fees. The debate last week led to all kinds of important questions: What’s access, and why is it crucial for it to be free? What’s labor, and who should do the compensating for it? And perhaps most i...

This week, we talk about Sean Penn’s deeply terrible debut novel, and give him the First Pages Show treatment—it’s very cathartic. We also discuss the implications of Microsoft cracking down on explicit content across its online platforms, which includes Office, which means it includes writers. Finally: what should we make of the response to the distribution plan for John Oliver’s book, and what d...