You Only Live Twice (novel) - Release and Reception

Release and Reception

... high-flown and romanticized caricatures of episodes in the career of an outstanding public servant.

Ian Fleming, Bond's obituary
You Only Live Twice, Chapter 21

You Only Live Twice was published in the UK on 16 March 1964, by Jonathan Cape and cost sixteen shillings. There were 62,000 pre-orders for the book, a significant increase over the 42,000 advance orders for the hardback first edition of On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Richard Chopping, cover artist for The Spy Who Loved Me, was engaged for the design. On 17 July 1963, Michael Howard of Jonathan Cape had written to Chopping about the artwork, saying: "I have had a talk with Ian about the ideas for the ingredients of this design. He is very much in favour of the toad ... but with a suitable array of oriental embellishrangment, i.e. toad plus Japanese flower arrangements, which he thinks should be sitting in a suitable piece of Japanese pottery, perhaps ornamented with a dragon motif. If you could manage a pink dragonfly sitting on the flowers, and perhaps just one epicanthic eye peering through them he thinks that will be just splendid!" Chopping's fee rose to 300 guineas for the cover, a rise from the 250 guineas he received for The Spy Who Loved Me.

You Only Live Twice was published in the United States by New American Library in August 1964; it was 240 pages long and cost $4.50.

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