kfitz

Relaunching The Anxiety of Obsolescence

Back in 2006, a few months before the release of my first book, The Anxiety of Obsolescence: The American Novel in the Age of Television, I launched a small WordPress-driven site to promote it. The site contained the full introduction and first chapter of the text, plus the introductory bits of the subsequent chapters, as well as gathering blurbs and reviews and so forth.

In the four-plus years since then, that site came to seem dated: the text column was awfully narrow, the template a little constrained, and the content… well, it was border-pushing enough for its time to have as much content posted as I did, but there are better ways of going about it now, and I’d been itching to get the full text into circulation.

I had a brief chat earlier this year with the folks at Vanderbilt University Press, my publisher, asking whether they’d approve of a site redesign that would include posting the full text in CommentPress. Happily, they agreed with my reasoning: four-plus years in, sales have slowed considerably, and it’s unlikely that having the full text online will keep someone from buying a copy of the book. If anything, coming across it through Google might persuade a reader to buy the text. So sure, go for it, was their basic response.

So this morning, I’m happy to announce the relaunch of The Anxiety of Obsolescence for your full-text reading and discussion pleasure.

Enormous thanks are due to my friends at Vanderbilt University Press for allowing me to republish the text in this format. I hope that you’ll support them by purchasing a copy of the book, or by asking your library to purchase a copy. In fact, VUP is generously offering a 20% discount off your entire order if you enter the code ANXIETY when you check out.

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