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.

1 Introduction: The Estrangement of Creation, Production, and Reception 1I The Field Of Creation 15
2 The Structure of Creativity: Or, Why Jarrettsville Almost Wasn't Called Jarrettsville 17
3 Authorial Careers: Or, How $6,000 Becomes a Middle-Class Income 37
II From Creation To Production 59
4 Literary Agents and Double Duties: Or, Why an Author's Success Is Out of Her Control 61
III The Field Of Production 83
5 Decision Making, Taste, and Financial Commitment to Culture: Or, Why Counterpoint Press Accepted Jarrettsville after Rejecting It 85
6 Industry Structure and the Position and Disposition of Publishers: Or, How Some of the End of Jarrettsville Quite Literally Became the Beginning 107
7 Storytelling and Mythmaking: Or, How a One-Sentence Email Nearly Doubled a Print Run 127
IV From Production To Reception 151
8 Retailers and Reviewers: Or, How Being Placed on the Front Table Could Have Tanked Jarrettsville 153
V The Field Of Reception 183
9 Reading Life into Novels: Or, Why a Misanthropic Thug May Not Be All Bad 185
10 Reading Novels into Life: Or, How a Story about the Past Became a Story about the Present 205
VI Connecting The Circuit 223
11 Conclusion: Reconnecting Creation, Production, and Reception 225
Methodological Appendix: From There to Here 245
Acknowledgments 255
Notes 259
References 283
Index 299