From Anne R. Allen:
It’s not just today’s authors who work hard. Consider Ian Fleming.
The Man With The Golden Typewriter: Ian Fleming’s James Bond Letters is a collection by Fleming’s nephew of the author’s letters to his publisher, editors, colleagues, other writers, fans, readers, and friends.
They were written in the 1950s when the British mail service operated at high efficiency. A letter mailed in the morning would be delivered the same day. The letters are organized chronologically and were written contemporaneous to the publication of the James Bond thrillers, beginning with Casino Royale.
Lively, witty, and extremely informative about the inner working of book publishing at the time, the letters reveal Fleming to be a man of charm, lively intellect and wide interests.
He was also a hard-working author concerned with the technical, editorial, and financial details of publishing.
. . . .
In fact, his publisher was—shall we say—barely lukewarm about Casino Royale. He had little interest in thrillers, “believing them to be short-run phenomena that rarely covered their costs. Nor did he think much of their authors, and suspected that Fleming was a dilettante. Remarkably, Casino Royale was the only Bond book Fleming’s publisher ever read.”
. . . .
Fleming was a disciplined writer. Every morning, for three hours, he sat at his desk and typed 2,000 words of a new Bond adventure during January and February. Those were the months he spent in his house, Goldeneye, located on the Caribbean island of Jamaica.
He shored up his discipline by “obstinately closing my mind to self-mockery” and wondering “what will my friends say?” He joked that as “a confirmed bachelor on the eve of marriage, I decided to take my mind off the dreadful prospect by writing a thriller.”
. . . .
Fleming also wrote blurbs, concerned himself with the details of covers and size of print orders, and suggested ads and promotions, Also, he drummed up reviews, contacted magazine editors about feature stories, and concerned himself with the size of print orders, advertising budgets as well as the ads themselves.
Nor did he overlook the details of his contracts—royalties, foreign editions, option, serial, movies, and tv. He worked closely with cover designers, making suggestions about images, and commenting on title fonts.
. . . .
The novelist Michael Arlen advised him to “write your second book before you see the reviews of the first. Casino Royale is good but the reviewers may damn it and take the heart out of you.” Heeding Arlen’s words, Fleming completed Live and Let Die before its predecessor had even been published.
Link to the rest at Anne R. Allen
Thanks much for picking up this post, PG! It was written by my blog partner, NYT bestseller Ruth Harris.