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

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Childress, Clayton, author.

Series:

Princeton studies in cultural sociology.

Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology ; 73

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Nixon, Cornelia. Jarrettsville.

Nixon, Cornelia.

Book industries and trade.

Printing.

Publishers and publishing.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (319 pages) : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2017]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

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.

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 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

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

ISBN:

9780691191874

0691191875

OCLC:

984688487