sales figures were strong enough for Cape to offer Fleming a three-book deal. In April 1955 Pan Books issued a paperback version and sold 41,000 copies in the first year. In the US three publishers turned the book down before Macmillan Publishing Co offered Fleming a deal. Casino Royale was published on 23 March 1954 in the US, but sales were poor, totalling only 4,000 copies across the entire US during the course of the year. When the novel was released as a US paperback in 1955, it was re-titled by publisher American Popular Library; Fleming's suggestions for a new title, The Double-O Agent and The Deadly Gamble, were disregarded in favour of You Asked for It, but this marketing ploy failed to raise the interest. The Popular Library version also changed Bond's name, calling him "Jimmy Bond". In 2023 Ian Fleming Publications—the company that administers all Fleming's literary works—had the Bond series edited as part of a sensitivity review to remove or reword some racial or ethnic descriptors. The rerelease of the series was for the 70th anniversary of Casino Royale. Critical reception Hugh I'Anson Fausset, writing in The Manchester Guardian, thought that Casino Royale was "a first-rate thriller ... with a breathtaking plot". Although he considered the book to be "schoolboy stuff", he felt the novel was "galvanised into life by the hard brilliance of the telling". Alan Ross, writing in The Times Literary Supplement wrote that Casino Royale was "an extremely engaging affair", and that "the especial charm ... is the high poetry with which he invests the green baize lagoons of the casino tables". He concluded that the book was "both exciting and extremely civilized". Reviewing for The Listener, Simon Raven believed that Fleming was a "kind of supersonic John Buchan", but he was somewhat dismissive of the plot, observing that it is "a brilliant but improbable notion" that includes "a deal of champagne-drinking, bomb-throwing, relentless pitting of wits etc ... with a cretinous love-affair". Raven also dismissed Bond as an "infantile" creation, but did allow that "Fleming tells a good story with strength and distinction ... his creation of a scene, both visually and emotionally, is of a very high order indeed." John Betjeman, writing in The Daily Telegraph, considered that "Ian Fleming has discovered the secret of the narrative art ... which is to work up to a climax unrevealed at the end of