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Print Run Podcast

Erik Hane and Laura Zats
Print Run Podcast
Latest episode

193 episodes

  • Print Run Podcast

    Episode 188—The Red-flagisode

    13/07/2026 | 46 mins.
    This week, in response to a steady stream of questions about how to interface with literary agents either during the query process or once you’re actually working with them, we present to you: a list of Red Flags to look for with regard to agents! We get into communication styles, transparency, pressure, and much more as we try to work through whatever has you vexed about your interactions with agents. Let’s figure out what’s normal and what isn’t!
  • Print Run Podcast

    Episode 187—Goblins in the Source Code

    12/06/2026 | 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!
  • Print Run Podcast

    Episode 186—Middlemen, featuring Laura B. McGrath

    06/05/2026 | 1h 1 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 of our best conversations in the history of the show and we think you’ll love it.

    And be sure to buy MIDDLEMEN, available here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/middlemen-literary-agents-and-the-making-of-american-fiction-laura-b-mcgrath/df5cb73be04facb1?ean=9780691256160&next=t
  • Print Run Podcast

    Episode 185—Mahjong on the Telephone

    16/04/2026 | 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, anymore? What happens when an “artist” is a marketing idea instead of an authentic pursuit?
  • Print Run Podcast

    Episode 184—The Hanger Games

    27/02/2026 | 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 you want to participate in our Query Drive to benefit Open Market at the Zion Community Commons, send $100 to us via Paypal (printrunpodcast@gmail.com) or Venmo (Laura-Zats) and (if not a gift slot), email your query to printrunpodcast@gmail.com. If you want to claim a gifted critique, email us to let us know!
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About 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.
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