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.

Christopher Wood, himself a novelist, and 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.

Their part in the novelization 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.

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, in which Kevin McClory was made aware of certain plot points of the film The Spy Who Loved Me.

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.

Marghanita Laski, writing in The Listener, called Wood "an apparently promising thriller writer struggling to emerge from obligatory bits of set-piece nastiness.