Stephen Rebello researched the film thoroughly through Hitchcock's personal records and archives, and he interviewed virtually every surviving cast and crew member.

Prior to the book's publication, Rebello's initial research appeared as a 22-page article in the April 1986 issue of Cinefantastique entitled "Psycho: The Making of Alfred Hitchcock's Masterpiece".

Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho was initially distributed in hardcover print by W.W. Norton for Dembner Books on April 15, 1990, in the United States.

The book was re-published in early 2013 in England, Italy, and Japan, as well as published for the first time in Brazil, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Russia, Korea, and China.

On the publication of the hardcover first edition in 1990, critic Richard Schickel called the book "indispensable and marvelously readable" and "one of the best accounts of the making of an individual movie we've ever had".

[2] Anthony Quinn in The Sunday Times wrote that "[the book] combines a gossipy retrospective with a serious work of criticism, presenting an articulate guide to Hitchcock's idiosyncratic approach to film-making and the collaborative efforts that underpinned it.

The author has conducted interviews with all those involved in the making of Psycho – its casting, scripting, art design, lighting, editing, selling – in the course of it, we inch closer to the bizarre, unpredictable quality of its director".

Entertainment Weekly, referring to Rebello's revealing how Hitchcock arrived at the sound of the knife stabbing the heroine in the shower, opined "the melon tale alone is worth the price of [the book]".