Print Run Podcast

Our main conversation this week is about the recent decision by the Writers Guild of America to push forward in encouraging its members to fire their agents, despite mounting pressure and uncertainty for the writers in their ranks. It’s a really noteworthy (and brave!) step that cuts to the heart of so many issues of how entertainment and publishing treat their creators. Join us as we try to make sense of it.

After some lighter conversation about Laura’s recent Wisconsin book trip, what we’re reading, and who the writerly voice of the millennial generation might be, we talk about Stacey Abrams’s romance-novel-themed appearance on Colbert, a recent discussion about whether the Bad Sex Awards are reflections of America’s latent puritanism, and the larger question of how sex writing intersects with notions of prestige and acclaim in the literary world. It’s warm out, we’re wearing shorts, come hang out.

In light of another RITA award controversy, we discuss the different ways that the literary world hands out prizes, and discuss the interplay between readers, writers, and critics when it comes to shaping the awards landscape. Plus, a discussion about a very good publishing op-ed in the Guardian in a new edition of “What’s Going On Down There?”, and a To Loon It May Concern about what to do when the Writer Internet becomes counterproductive to your work.

We’re back, with a recap of our time at the London Book Fair! It was a trip that reminded us of where we sit in the vast constellation of publishing as an industry, and we got to see how the rubber meets the road in foreign-rights sales too. Come hang out for one of our chattier episodes, full of some Publishing Truths and also just some trip recap as well. It’s good to be back!

This week’s episode is all about comp titles--far from being just something you put in a query letter, comps are how the whole industry talks to itself, and in many ways that practice has come to shape publishing in significant ways. If every book’s prospects exist in relation to a different, preexisting book, how does that change what gets published, and how?

This week’s show features a discussion on the tricky nature of writing fiction about real historical figures, and the heavy responsibility a writer carries in managing source material, historical gaps, and power dynamics. Then, separately, we talk about how agents and authors might balance the much-justified desire for industry transparency with the fact that the author-agent relationship is, well, human and complicated; how can both parties work together to find a place where everyone’s comfortable? Plus, a great To Loon It May Concern about blurbs!

In this week’s show, we discuss everyone’s favorite topic: grammar. How do certain conventions in grammar, syntax, and punctuation end up as class signifiers or tools for enforcing other systems of power? We talk style guides, copy editing, the new book on grammar by Benjamin Dreyer, and plenty else. Also: the horrors of magazine submission fees, and a new letter to the Loon.

We survived the cold! This week we take a look at Wattpad’s new plan to create a full-service publisher and “revolutionize” the media industry (lol), especially in light of further traditional imprint closures and consolidations. Then, we examine that bonkers New Yorker story about Dan Mallory, and discuss how and why some people in the publishing world are allowed to be eccentric liars and self-mythologizers while others never even get a chance to tell the truth. And a To Loon It May Concern at the end. Join us!

In light of the NYT’s critical response to the debut story collection from Kristen Roupenian (author of “Cat Person”), we trace the publishing route from the initial story’s viral success to where the collection is at now, and talk fairly extensively about how publishing handles and responds to viral success. We see a connection between that response and publishing’s newfound desire for first-person narratives readers can “see themselves” in--so much so that a whole imprint has started to publish exclusively first-person projects. This is one of our better and deeper conversations, in our opinion, and we’re excited to hear what you think!

This week, we take stock of three bizarre and unsettling publishing stories: the apparent missteps in the reporting and fact-checking in Jill Abramson’s new book, the author Sherrilyn Kenyon filing a lawsuit over having been poisoned, and to top it all off, Kathleen Hale getting another book deal that strangely seems to celebrate the fact that she tracked down a Goodreads reviewer to her home. It’s a mix of the weird, and we try to draw some larger lessons for publishing out of the mess. Join us!