Release and Reception
On Her Majesty's Secret Service was published on 1 April 1963 in the UK as a hardcover edition by publishers Jonathan Cape; it was 288 pages long and cost 16 shillings. A limited edition of 250 copies were also printed that were numbered and signed by Fleming. Artist Richard Chopping once again undertook the cover art for the first edition. There were 42,000 advance orders for the hardback first edition and Cape did an immediate second impression of 15,000 copies, selling over 60,000 by the end of April 1963. By the end of 1963 it had sold in excess of 75,000 copies.
The novel was published in America in August by the New American Library, after Fleming changed publishers from Viking Press after The Spy Who Loved Me. The book was 299 pages long and cost $4.50 and it topped The New York Times Best Seller list for over six months.
Read more about this topic: On Her Majesty's Secret Service (novel)
Famous quotes containing the words release and/or reception:
“The steel decks rock with the lightning shock, and shake with the
great recoil,
And the sea grows red with the blood of the dead and reaches for his spoil—
But not till the foe has gone below or turns his prow and runs,
Shall the voice of peace bring sweet release to the men behind the
guns!”
—John Jerome Rooney (1866–1934)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)