# The Ace Paperback Affair - Event: Controversy - Date: 1965 – 1966 - Houses: Ace Books, Ballantine Books, George Allen & Unwin - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/the-ace-paperback-affair/ > In 1965 Ace Books printed The Lord of the Rings without Tolkien's permission for 75 cents a volume — and the fight that followed turned a cult novel into a mass-market sensation. **Why it matters:** The first American paperbacks of The Lord of the Rings, and the copyright war they sparked, put Tolkien in the hands of a mass audience, launched the 1960s Tolkien craze, and helped create fantasy as a paperback publishing category. ## Quick answers **What was The Ace Paperback Affair?** In 1965 Ace Books printed The Lord of the Rings without Tolkien's permission for 75 cents a volume — and the fight that followed turned a cult novel into a mass-market sensation. **When did The Ace Paperback Affair happen?** 1965 – 1966. **Why did The Ace Paperback Affair matter?** The first American paperbacks of The Lord of the Rings, and the copyright war they sparked, put Tolkien in the hands of a mass audience, launched the 1960s Tolkien craze, and helped create fantasy as a paperback publishing category. ## What happened For its first decade in America, [The Lord of the Rings](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-lord-of-the-rings/) was an expensive hardcover from Houghton Mifflin with a devoted but modest following. [Tolkien](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/j-r-r-tolkien/) and his British publisher [George Allen & Unwin](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/george-allen-and-unwin/) had been cautious about a cheap paperback. [Donald A. Wollheim](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/donald-a-wollheim/), the veteran science fiction editor at [Ace Books](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/ace-books/), saw an opening. Wollheim's reasoning rested on a quirk of mid-century American copyright law. To save costs, Houghton Mifflin had built its edition partly from sheets printed in Britain, and the rules then governing imported printings meant, in Wollheim's view, that the book had never been properly protected in the United States and was effectively in the public domain there. Whether he was legally right has been debated ever since; what is certain is that Ace went ahead without asking Tolkien and without offering him a penny. *The Fellowship of the Ring* appeared in May 1965, *The Two Towers* and *The Return of the King* in July, each for 75 cents. Tolkien's response was swift and, for a reclusive Oxford professor, remarkably modern. He could not easily sue, so he mobilized his readers. He revised the text and wrote a new foreword so that an authorized edition would carry fresh, unambiguous copyright, and [Ballantine Books](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/ballantine-books/) rushed that edition into print beginning in October 1965, priced at 95 cents. On its back cover was a short statement in Tolkien's name: this edition, and no other, had been published with his consent, and "those who approve of courtesy (at least) to living authors will purchase it and no other." He also answered American fan letters by explaining that the Ace books were unauthorized. The campaign worked. Fans, the newly formed Tolkien Society of America (which first met on the Columbia University campus in 1965) and professional writers — Tolkien's biographer credits pressure from the Science Fiction Writers of America — turned opinion against Ace, and by Tolkien's own account some institutions banned Ace's products. By February 1966 Tolkien had reached an agreement with Wollheim: Ace would pay royalties on the copies it had sold, more than 100,000 by one account, and would let its edition go out of print rather than reprint it. Ace announced the settlement publicly in March. ## Why it mattered The irony is that everyone won, and the reader most of all. The price war put the whole trilogy within reach of students for a couple of dollars, and the publicity of the dispute made it a story in its own right. Ballantine's authorized edition sold about a quarter of a million copies within ten months; it entered the *New York Times* paperback bestseller list at number three in September 1966 and reached number one that December. Within a year Tolkien had gone from a professor's cult favorite to the literary idol of American campuses — the moment captured by the slogan ["Frodo Lives!"](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/frodo-lives/). The affair also revealed a market. Publishers now knew that hundreds of thousands of readers would buy long, invented-world fantasy in cheap paperback. Ballantine, which had also issued [The Hobbit](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-hobbit/) in paperback in August 1965, followed up with the reprints that became the [The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/ballantine-adult-fantasy/) series, while Ace, under Wollheim, became a major fantasy publisher in its own right. ## Legacy The Ace affair is a founding myth of fantasy publishing and of fandom's sense of itself: a story in which readers, organized by an author, enforced fair dealing without a court case. It also left a tangle of textual history. Tolkien's revisions for the 1965 authorized text became the basis of the second edition, and collectors still hunt the Ace "pirate" paperbacks with their gaudy covers. Most importantly, the paperbacks spread Middle-earth into the generation that would build the games. Hobbits, [Balrogs](https://www.lanternhall.org/bestiary/balrog/) and [Ents](https://www.lanternhall.org/bestiary/treant/) turned up in [Chainmail](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/chainmail/)'s fantasy supplement in 1971 and in early [Dungeons & Dragons](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/original-dungeons-and-dragons/) — which in turn made Tolkien's rights a valuable commodity, the beginning of the long [The Tolkien Rights Saga](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/tolkien-rights-saga/). The whole [The Paperback Boom & the Counterculture](https://www.lanternhall.org/chronicle/paperback-boom/) can be traced to a 75-cent book Tolkien never approved. ## Facts - Ace published The Fellowship of the Ring in May 1965, and The Two Towers and The Return of the King in July, at 75 cents each. - Editor [Donald A. Wollheim](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/donald-a-wollheim/) argued that the U.S. copyright was invalid because Houghton Mifflin's American edition had been bound from sheets printed in Britain. - Ballantine's authorized paperbacks, at 95 cents, began appearing in October 1965 with a back-cover note from Tolkien urging readers to buy that edition 'and no other.' - Tolkien revised the text and wrote a new foreword for the authorized edition, strengthening his American copyright claim. - Ace sold more than 100,000 copies before agreeing, by early 1966, to pay Tolkien royalties and not to reprint. - The Ballantine edition sold about a quarter of a million copies in ten months and reached number one on the New York Times paperback list in December 1966. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ace_Books) - [The Unauthorized Lord of the Rings (Kirkus)](https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/unauthorized-lord-rings/) - [Donald A. Wollheim (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_A._Wollheim) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.