Are you allowed to use these in a book if you want to get it published?

[ღ Sᴛᴀʏ Sᴛʀᴏɴɢ ღ]

I am writing a book that I plan to try to get published but fist I want to be sure what I am and am not allowed to use in my story.

So my question is are you allowed to use:

-quotes (especially from more modern books, not just classics)
-restaurant/store names
-websites (Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Google, etc..)
-talk about characters from more modern books\
-celebrities' names


I was also wondering if I would be able to use quotes from books that have already used them. Well, more accurately, if that would be considered bad taste. Because I would like to use "We accept the love we think we deserve." which was used in 'The Perks of Being A Wallflower' by Stephen Chbosky and 'Khalepa ta kala' (beauty is harsh) which was used in 'The Infernal Devices Trilogy' by Cassandra Clare. (they were going to be tattoos on my character by the way)

If you took the time to answer this, thank you

[Lynn]

Quotes, if you get permission from the owner.

The rest? Why not include AOL or MySpace in your novel? What are they? That's the problem. They used to be big, and then they fell out of favor. Same thing will probably happen to Facebook and Twitter.

You can use anything related to modern culture in your story, but make sure it's something that will stand the test of time. Bobby Sherman and Jerry and the Pacemakers didn't. The Beatles did. Same deal when you bring in modern culture. If someone 10 years from now won't recognize it, don't use it, unless it is a period piece and you include enough that sets the period. (Hard to do, since we have no idea if Justin Beifer will be remembered 10 years from now or not. I think he's Bobby Sherman. lol)

Oh, and leave Disney out of it all together. That's one litigious company and you don't want to get in a lawsuit with them.

[Arabella]

You can mention restaurant or store names as long as you aren't slandering them. It's okay to say 'Fred went to the 7-Eleven.' It's not okay to say 'Fred hated going to the 7-Eleven. It was overpriced and the staff were rude."

The same goes for celebrity names and websites.

You can talk about characters from other books in the same way. I read a short story where famous book characters come to life and Harry Potter was mentioned. But again, it's not okay to say something defamatory about the character, no matter what your personal opinion of them is. You could mention that your character has the ass-kicking skills of Buffy but you can't say Buffy was a ridiculous role-model for girls.

You can also reference these characters if your character is watching them on TV. I've read vampire novels where it is mentioned they are watching Buffy on TV. These are pop-culture references and they are not uncommon. But they can date your book. What is hot now won't still be hot in a few years so making references to a current singer might make your book seem prematurely dated.

Hope this helps.

[DIANE]

Write your book. In the unlikely event you actually sell it., your editor will check those kinds of things for you. It's absolutely the least of your concerns at this stage of the game.

[TheBellJar]

First I'll tell you what you definitely can't use ....song lyrics! The music industry is VERY strict about this and will sue. There is a thing called "fair use" which means you can post a small amount of another work like a one sentence quote from a book but the law regarding this is based on percentages and one line from a song is too high a percentage of a song to count as fair use and the music industry is really strict. Actually you CAN use song lyrics but only if you are will to PAY the person who wrote the song and it's very expensive.
Using the name of celebrity could be dodgy if you say anything remotely negative about them otherwise it might be alright if it's completely positive or neutral.
A publisher might be uncomfortable with you using the name of a website like Facebook I think people in books often change the name of social networking sites to a fiction made up one.
I'm not sure about characters from modern books I think it could be dicey. Classics like Jane Eyre would be fine.