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.