Highsmith's publisher, Harper & Bros, rejected the manuscript.[29] Her agent warned her that she was committing career suicide by following Strangers on a Train with a blatantly lesbian novel.[30] It was accepted by Coward-McCann and published in hardcover in 1952 with the "Claire Morgan" alias.[31][32] She dedicated the book to "Edna, Jordy and Jeff"—three people whom Highsmith invented.[33]
The 25-cent lesbian pulp edition by Bantam Books appeared in 1953,[14][34][35][36] followed by a mass market edition in 1969 by Macfadden Books.[37] The Price of Salt subsequently fell out of print.[38]
In 1983, lesbian publishing house Naiad Press offered Highsmith $5,000 to reprint the novel under her own name, or $2,000 under the pseudonym.[39] Highsmith accepted the latter and it was reissued in 1984.[40][16] In 1990, the book was republished by Bloomsbury as Carol under Patricia Highsmith's name,[41] with the addition of an afterword by her.[42][32] Phyllis Nagy said Highsmith chose "Carol" because Highsmith, herself, "was Therese and the object of her desire wasn't herself...it was someone else."[17] The novel was so personal to Highsmith that "it was difficult for her to take ownership of it as a writer for many years."[43]
The marketing of the novel in successive editions[44] reflected different strategies for making the story of a lesbian romance attractive or acceptable to the reading public. The Coward-McCann dust jacket called it "A Modern Novel of Two Women". The paperboard cover of the 1953 Bantam edition balanced the words "The Novel of a Love Society Forbids" with a reassuring quote from The New York Times that said the novel "[handles] explosive material ... with sincerity and good taste."[16][e] The 2004 reissue by Norton appealed to highbrow tastes with the tagline "The novel that inspired Nabokov's Lolita " on the cover[46]—a claim that stemmed from a theory by Terry Castle published in a 2003 essay for The New Republic.[f] (The tagline was not included in subsequent editions.[49])
As a movie tie-in with the release of the 2015 motion picture adaptation of the novel, Norton published a new paperback edition as Carol with the subtitle "Previously Titled The Price of Salt", and the cover featuring the image of the North American theatrical film poster.[50] The cover of the Bloomsbury tie-in edition featured the title Carol superimposed on a scene from the film with images of Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara from another scene, but did not include a reference to the original title.[51]
