Release and Reception
| “ | ... the experiment has obviously gone very much awry | ” |
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—Ian Fleming, in letter to his editor |
The Spy Who Loved Me was published on 16 April 1962 in the UK as a hardcover edition by publishers Jonathan Cape; it was 221 pages long and cost 15 shillings. Artist Richard Chopping once again undertook the cover art, and raised his fee from the 200 guineas he had charged for Thunderball, to 250 guineas. The artwork included a commando knife which was borrowed from Fleming's editor, Michael Howard at Jonathan Cape. The Spy Who Loved Me was published in the US by Viking Books on 11 April 1962 with 211 pages and costing $3.95.
The reception to the novel was so bad that Fleming wrote to Michael Howard at Jonathan Cape, to explain why he wrote the book: "I had become increasingly surprised to find my thrillers, which were designed for an adult audience, being read in schools, and that young people were making a hero out of James Bond ... So it crossed my mind to write a cautionary tale about Bond, to put the record straight in the minds particularly of younger readers ... the experiment has obviously gone very much awry".
Fleming subsequently requested that there should be no reprints or paperback version of the book and for the British market no paperback version appeared until after Fleming's death. Because of the heightened sexual writing in the novel, it was banned in a number of countries. In the US the story was also published in Stag magazine, with the title changed to Motel Nymph.
Read more about this topic: The Spy Who Loved Me (novel)
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