When Ian Fleming sold the film rights to the James Bond novels to Harry Saltzman and Albert R Broccoli, he only gave permission for the title The Spy Who Loved Me to be used. Since the screenplay for the film had nothing to do with Fleming’s original novel, Glidrose Publications, for the first time, authorised that a novelisation be written based upon the script. This would also be the first regular Bond novel published since Colonel Sun nearly a decade earlier. Christopher Wood, who co-authored the screenplay with Richard Maibaum, was commissioned to write the book, which was given the title James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me.

The novelisation and the screenplay, although both written by Wood, are somewhat different. In the novelisation SMERSH is still active and still after James Bond. Their part in the novelisation begins during the “pre-title credits” sequence in which Bond is escaping from a cabin on the top of Aiguille du Mort, a mountain near the town of Chamonix. After the mysterious death of Fekkish, SMERSH appears yet again, this time capturing and torturing Bond for the whereabouts of the microfilm that retains plans for a submarine tracking system (Bond escapes after killing two of the interrogators). The appearance of SMERSH conflicts with a number of Bond stories, including the film The Living Daylights (1987), in which a character remarks that SMERSH has been defunct for over 20 years. It also differs from the latter half of Fleming’s Bond novels in which SMERSH is mentioned to have been put out of operation. Members of SMERSH from the novelisation include the Bond girl Anya Amasova and her lover Sergei Borzov as well as Colonel-General Niktin, a character from Fleming’s novel From Russia with Love who has since become the head of SMERSH.

Other differences include the villain, Karl Stromberg, being renamed as Sigmund Stromberg. The change of Stromberg’s given name as well as the existence of SMERSH may be in some way due to the controversy over Thunderball. At one point the villain of the film was to be Ernst Stavro Blofeld and his organisation SPECTRE; however, this was changed to avoid a possible lawsuit over the rights to this character, which originated from the novel Thunderball.