Legal Issue!
My book is a novel set in and around a famous very large truck stop in the US Midwest, actually referred to by name in the book but readily identifiable from context anyway. It went up on KBP as an eBook only a couple of days ago. Needless to say, no sales avalanche! That's OK, no hurry. Here's the issue:
I had asked the truck stop company a week or so ago for permission to use one of the photos available on its website for the cover. I was told by a friendly person that they would need to see the work it was going to be used with. I gladly sent them a pdf copy of the text because I felt my book portrayed the truck stop in a very positive light, because the book is light-hearted and almost absurdist, and because it is clearly a work of fiction making no factual assertions at all (IMHO, silly me). I even suggested they might want to sell the paperback, when it comes out, in their store.
Yesterday I got a very huffy email back from a different and not friendly person to whom the matter had been referred. Without saying she had actually read the text this person said the book was libelous and demanded it be taken down. They said their lawyer had been copied. I wrote back as calmly as I could, but I agreed to "unpublished" the book temporarily and without prejudice, which was very easily. No big loss. I am in no hurry and I wanted to be reasonable, at least until I talked to my lawyer (a good personal friend who is also a top lawyer in a high powered firm, and who coincidentally is big fan of the book.)
I also asked the not-so nice but very demanding person if they could provide me with specifics of the aspects of the book that they think make false and damaging representations of fact about the truck stop. The possibilities, in my opinion, are:
--There is a drug-trafficking operation being conducted, unbeknownst to the truck stop, through the use of lockers in the truck stop where truckers acting as mules exchange packages without meeting one another.
--There are two very nice hooker characters who work the lot.
--One of the main characters, a waitress in the truck stop diner, when it is suggested that maybe she could cook in the diner instead of waiting tables since she is a good cook, says that "they" would never have a "pretty white girl" in the kitchen and move a black guy out front. (This is the most problematic thing I wrote, in my opinion.)
--There is a sub-plot involving unravelling the mystery of how the land where the truck stop sits, in one quadrant of an interstate cloverleaf, came to be acquired decades ago before the route of the highway was known at the expense of a farmer who was maneuvered into foreclosure by the bank. This gets solved in the end in a way that completely absolves the owners of the truck stop from any wrongdoing.
--Another sub-plot involves the son of said farmer bearing a grudge against the truck stop and occasionally and surreptitiously vandalizing innocent truckers. He eventually decides this is wrong, but continues to take revenge on trucks belonging to truckers who mistreat the hookers, being a good hearted soul and being the Godfather of one of them. That part could be problematic in suggesting that the place isn't safe and secure for truckers if it weren't for the fact that it is obviously not intended as a factual claim about the real truck stop.
Anyway, this really got my dander up for a minute or two, but I don't want a fight just for the sake of principle. I don't intend to give up but I don't want to rub it in their face either. I honestly did think I was painting a pretty positive picture of the truck stop. I would happily do a rewrite to genericize the place, though it would be hard since local details play a big part in the scene.
Thank you for reading this and for giving me the benefit of your experience and point of view.