Interview

My friend Adam Robinson has interviewed me. It starts off with questions about Zizek and Theology, then gets more general.

Helping the economy

I’m worried that Zizek and Theology needs a government bailout. I remember those happy days when it first became available on Amazon — even during preorder, it was hovering around a sales rank of 100,000. When it came out in the US, there were a couple joyous months when it could even get up to 30,000. Then came Christmas. Suddenly I was down to 500,000. I figured it was because the Christmas season had led to a glut of people buying “regular” books, but the pagerank never really recovered. Now it’s been losing around 10-20,000 a day, putting me on a slow decline to 1,000,000+ — Amazon oblivion.

Surely Amazon oblivion is the fate of nearly every academic book. It was foolish and vain of me to check my Amazon pagerank in the first place, much less so frequently. And why should I be rooting for Amazon to be selling so many copies of my book anyway, when they have policies that are so disadvantageous to publishers? Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Yet I still hope that the Treasury Department will use its TARP powers to buy up piles of Zizek and Theology alongside its collateralized debt obligations. Such programs have long kept the right-wing publishing industry afloat, and now that we’ve apparently elected a dangerous Islamic socialist as president, is it too much to ask that the government would subsidize the study of an important left-wing thinker? Especially one who is currently the leading candidate for Secretary of Culture!

A Humble Request

First, I would like to thank everyone who has bought a copy of Zizek and Theology. It is flattering that readers who are used to a couple paragraphs at a time from me are willing to take the plunge for a full book.

Now the humble request: If you have read the book and approve, please consider writing a customer review on Amazon or another site of your choice. If you have a blog, you could also post the review or some further iteration of it, and I would link to it, creating a virtual tsunami of traffic for you.

Additionally, if you are an academic, please consider writing a review in some journal or other. In this scenario, we both win: my book gets attention, and you get an easy CV line. You can probably even get a free review copy. (I have no special ability to “hook you up” with a review copy — there is a standard process you can follow here. Depending on the journal you are working with, they may also obtain the copy on your behalf or even have a review copy on hand already.)

Of course, if you disapprove of the book, we can just discuss that personally, without involving Amazon, blogs, or journals.

Zizek and Theology Note and Question

Last night I saw Zizek and Theology on the shelf of the Seminary Co-op Bookstore, meaning I have officially arrived. Probably due to the intervention of a friend of mine on staff, it is also on a little display case in the religion section.

I also have a question: have those who preordered received their copies yet? (I am particularly interested in preorders through one of my links.)

Another Zizek and Theology Update

It is now available at the websites of both Borders and Barnes & Noble and listed as shipping within 24 hours. Amazon is presently out of stock. Buying directly from Continuum is also a good option, since it means supporting a quality academic press without enriching a soulless corporation.

I checked at the Borders downtown at State and Randolph on Friday, and they didn’t have it. Of course, I won’t have fully “arrived” until I see it on the shelves of the Seminary Co-op Bookstore.

Zizek and Theology Update

It looks like two copies ordered through my link have shipped — on Amazon, it is now listed as “ships within 2 to 5 weeks” rather than preorder. In short, it is haltingly becoming available in my native land.

Read it, cherish it, assign it in your courses.