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.

"Innovatively imagined, deliciously detailed, exhaustively explained--Under the Cover tells curious readers as complete a story as they are ever likely to find of the genesis and eventual fate of a contemporary novel."--Howard S. Becker, author of Art Worlds

"Under the Cover sparkles with insights. Childress has given us the richest biography of a book--from womb to tomb, so to speak--that we are likely to see."--Wendy Griswold, author of American Guides: The Federal Writers' Project and the Casting of American Culture

"Superb. Childress knits together ordinarily separate domains of research to track the life of a work of art--the novel Jarrettsville--from conception through consumption. His important book is a major contribution to the sociology of culture."--Paul J. DiMaggio, coeditor of the Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology series

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