The sociological analysis of cultural production draws from an array of theoretical approaches, including work in economic sociology, organizational sociology, and the sociology of culture. The Production of Culture (PofC) approach, an application of organizational theory to culture producing industries, is dominant. Relying on three case studies in the American trade book publishing industry, this dissertation brings three recent theoretical moves to bear on original data: (1) the interaction of institutions, cognitions, and networks in suppressing and fomenting evolutions in the literary field, (2) the collision of competing institutional logics in acquisition decisions for literary trade manuscripts, and (3) the on-the-ground negotiation of meaning with regards to both text and context during processes of genre assignment for a single manuscript. In total, the work signals future directions not only for the study of the book trade, but also for the study of cultural production.