J-Sun, I had those Fafhrd and Mouser books (i.e. the six Ace paperbacks) and read them, most of them, at least, probably more than once. I Just don't care for them now. But I don't remember cover copy mentioning Tolkien.
If, say,
Swords Against Wizardry did mention Tolkien, I might wish that I'd hung on to it. Looking back over the record of my Tolkien-blurb findings for <1970, I'm struck by how few, relatively speaking, were the American paperback releases that seem to have invoked his name or
The Lord of the Rings.
In the 1970s fantasy was established as a publishers' niche and I'm sure there were plenty of reference to Tolkien and
LotR as publishers tried to sell books -- and you had the flourishing of (what I take to be) outright imitations trying to cash in, like the Shannara books. It's a testimony to the capacity of Tolkien's work to remain distinct in readers' imaginations, that these imitations didn't swamp the market, and Tolkien's work kept finding new readers. Indeed, even such special-interest titles as most, at least, of the volumes of
The History of Middle-earth appeared in popular paperback editions. Very few must be the readers who have read any of these books straight through, let along the whole 6,000 pages or so. I'm not among that number and don't expect I ever will read all of the HoME. Some of the things therein, though, I turn to again and again, notably
The Notion Club Papers in the
Sauron Defeated volume. ...I'm not sure that that one achieved mass market paperbacking.
