However, in my YA coming out next summer, Rampant, it’s set in real Rome, and all the buildings and neighborhoods and ruins and such are real. The only thing that’s changed is the fact that, um, there’s no real unicorn-hunting nunnery there, but the actual building is cobbled together from aspects of real nunnery’s and churches in the same neighborhood. Not many reviews out yet, but one that is praises the setting details of Rome.

All of which is to say you can go either way. Just depends on what makes you comfortable enough to write the story. With the Yale books, I needed a veneer of fiction to separate it out in my head; it wasn’t as necessary to me with a book that was so clearly fantasy — with that, I needed grounding in reality.

And as for riffing on, reusing, referring to, building on etc other people’s works, a current case in point is the speech by Mr Lowery you quoted in another post: “when black will not be asked to get in back” was a knowing reference to the 1947 Big Bill Broonzy song Black, Brown and White: “Now, if you was white, you is alright/If you was brown, stick around/But if you is black, oh brother/Get back, get back, get back.” (The red and yellow references were, I guess, Lowery’s own.)

When it comes to institutions like universities and specific businesses I think the common practise is to be a bit cautious. Especially if you’re writing a book where some of your characters are thinly disguised real people and it’s pretty clear your novel is an expose of the dirty world of Princeton or Vogue magazine or Harvey Norman or whatever.

I’m not an actual lawyer and I’m most familiar with the Australian situation, but yes, renaming/altering identifable people and corporations can be a good idea — particularly if the treatment of them is negative, because there might be a risk of defamation. (Defamation is tricky, because what is considered defamatory varies so widely between countries.)

Other legal issues in this kind of situation might include passing off, trademark infringement and/or invasion of privacy. And that’s just for text — photos bring up a whole other range of things to consider.

But again, I am not a qualified legal practitioner! Just a copyright nerd.

As an editor who has to deal with copyright questions fairly regularly, I thought I might leap in with a useful link (for Australian readers, sorry USians). The Copyright Council of Australia has many useful info sheets at http://www.copyright.org.au.

Most useful, perhaps, is to note that under Australian copyright law ‘Copyright protection is free and applies automatically when material is created. There is NO registration system for copyright in Australia.’

That means that as soon as it leaves your head and is in some tangible form – hand-written on napkins, spoken into a tape recorder, written on your blog, copyright exists and you own it.