What are my rights as an author? Can I do the following?

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Can I write a book detailing things that happened using the experience to a T? I consider the book (I just started it) based on an experience but I plan on adding a little more to it that I think may have happened but have no proof. I changed peoples names in the book but if people that were involved read it, they may think it sounds like them. I no longer have contact with any of the people involved. We are not on good terms. Is that okay to do as an author if I put a disclaimer at the beginning? Thanks!
 
If you are writing fiction, you can do anything you want. Change the names m change a couple of dates and places, and no one other than the people involved would recognize them. If you are writing non-fiction, you have to stick to the facts and be able to back them up. Disclaimers aren't worth the paper they are written on and in fact, a good lawyer can use it against you.
 
Sounds like a "based on a true story" book. Don't try to pull it off as a piece of non-fiction if you don't have all the facts (James Frey tried that and ended up in hot water). You can write it as fiction that is based on a true story and that gets you out of any trouble filling in the spaces.

Two things:
1. If you're using your real name on the jacket cover and the events are very close to what happened, you should accept the consequences if the subjects of the book find out. If it is published, there are still slim chances they will pick it up (unless they google your name), but don't write it if it would be truly damaging to their lives or otherwise unacceptable to you if they found out.

2. Be your own hardest critique on this: most people who want to write about their own lives or something that happened to them think that it is far more interesting than anyone else does. The experience may be genuinely interesting: you may have witnessed a murder in your sleepy little town, or one of your colleagues may have embezzled ten million dollars from one of the failed banks (in both cases you should go to the police, not write a book); or you may be such a gifted writer that you can make a fairly mundane, life's-little-moments story come alive like Hemingway or Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

But if you want to write about ex-wives or ex-friends or ex-colleagues and the crazy stuff you used to do - ask a few people (who aren't current friends) and see if anyone else finds it as interesting as you do.

Good luck!
 
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