Quote:
Originally Posted by jandrew
It is always best if you get express permission from the publisher(s) for any excerpts you use in your published work.
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Always?
This would force the author to avoid writing anything that the publisher, or a literary executor, didn't like. I would distrust an author who sold out their intellectual independence in this manner.
Anyone can sue anyone for anything, and, in the US, defendants can hardly ever get their legal bills reimbursed, even if they win by what amounts to a landslide. Even fiction authors sometimes are sued by someone imagining themselves to be a particular character. Lawsuits are, in my country, a risk you take when you speak out. The risk you take, if you get everyone you are writing about to authorize your book, is that no one, but them, will read it.