When working with a ghostwriter, there are two ways you need to protect yourself: You need to protect your intellectual property, and you need to protect your copyright.
Protecting your intellectual property is crucial if you will be revealing secret recipes, business processes or ideas to the ghostwriter to aid them in the writing process. To protect your intellectual property, you should insist that the ghostwriter sign a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA. The NDA will state that the information you provide to the ghostwriter is only to be used for the project for which they have been hired and that the information cannot be used or shared for any other purpose.
To protect your copyright, the ghostwriter should include a statement in the service agreement contract that clearly states that the work they are doing is a work for hire. This is the language that establishes you as the copyright holder and not the ghostwriter. Something similar to this language will work:
The Independent Contractor acknowledges that s/he has no right to or interest in any copyright to the work, products, documents, reports, or other materials resulting from the services performed to complete this project once payment has been rendered. The Independent Contractor agrees that the services and products listed in this Agreement were specially commissioned by the Employer as "works made-for-hire" (as that term is used in the Copyright Law of the United States). The Independent Contractor transfers to the Employer the copyright of the work described in this Agreement in perpetuity.
In this blog series, we have discussed the advantages of hiring a ghostwriter to help you complete your eBook. Ghostwriters can provide you the ability to publish eBooks even when you don’t have the time or writing skills to do so.
