Under the Cover : : The Creation, Production, and Reception of a Novel / / Clayton Childress.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press Complete eBook-Package 2017
• VerfasserIn: Childress, Clayton,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2017]; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Series: Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology ; 73
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (320 p.) :; 32 line illus.

Under the Cover follows the life trajectory of a single work of fiction from its initial inspiration to its reception by reviewers and readers. The subject is Jarrettsville, a historical novel by Cornelia Nixon, which was published in 2009 and based on an actual murder committed by an ancestor of Nixon's in the postbellum South.Clayton Childress takes you behind the scenes to examine how Jarrettsville was shepherded across three interdependent fields-authoring, publishing, and reading-and how it was transformed by its journey. Along the way, he covers all aspects of the life of a book, including the author's creative process, the role of the literary agent, how editors decide which books to acquire, how publishers build lists and distinguish themselves from other publishers, how they sell a book to stores and publicize it, and how authors choose their next projects. Childress looks at how books get selected for the front tables in bookstores, why reviewers and readers can draw such different meanings from the same novel, and how book groups across the country make sense of a novel and what it means to them.Drawing on original survey data, in-depth interviews, and groundbreaking ethnographic fieldwork, Under the Cover reveals how decisions are made, inequalities are reproduced, and novels are built to travel in the creation, production, and consumption of culture.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- 1. Introduction: The estrangement of Creation, Production, and reception -- PART I. THE FIELD OF CREATION -- 2 The Structure of Creativity -- 3. Authorial Careers: or, how $6,000 Becomes a Middle- Class income -- PART II. From Creation to ProduCtion -- 4. Literary agents and double duties -- PART III. The Field of Production -- 5. Decision Making, Taste, and financial Commitment to Culture: or, Why Counterpoint Press accepted Jarrettsville after rejecting it -- 6. Industry Structure and the Position and disposition of Publishers: or, how Some of the end of Jarrettsville Quite literally Became the Beginning -- 7. Storytelling and Mythmaking -- PART IV. From Production to reception -- 8. Retailers and reviewers: or, how Being Placed on the front Table Could have Tanked Jarrettsville -- PART V. The Field of Reception -- 9. Reading life into novels -- 10. Reading novels into life -- PART VI. Connecting the Circuit -- 11. Conclusion: reconnecting Creation, Production, and reception -- Methodological appendix -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- References -- Index