If you're considering hiring a ghostwriter, you might be wondering who will own the copyright and/or other intellectual property rights to the finished product. After all, hiring a ghostwriter is a sizable investment, and you want to make sure that you'll be able to use the content however you please once the ghostwriting project is complete.
Rest assured, when you hire a professional and reputable ghostwriter, you will remain the sole copyright holder of your content.
Before we dive into the specifics of who owns what when a ghostwriter delivers a manuscript to your specifications, let's first take a step back and review what a copyright is. In short, a copyright is a form of intellectual property protection that gives the creator of an original work the exclusive right to reproduce, distribute, perform, or display that work. It also grants the copyright owner the ability to sell that work and be compensated for it.
In most cases, the creator of a work is also the owner of the copyright. However, there are some exceptions to this rule. For example, if you create a work as part of your employment duties (i.e., as part of your job), your employer may be considered the owner of the copyright instead of you because there is likely a clause in your employment contract that qualifies your creation as “work product.”
When you commission someone to create content on your behalf—whether it's an article, ebook, memoir, novel manuscript, web copy, or anything else—you (or your company) will be considered the author/creator of that work, which means that you'll automatically own the copyright, too. A written work is considered copyrighted the moment it is written, and that copyright is later awarded officially if the work is produced by a publisher. (Read more here: https://kidlit.com/copyrighting-submissions-and-agent-plagiarism/)
Generally, a ghostwriter is legally considered an independent contractor on a ghostwriting project and their development of your manuscript is considered “work for hire.” As such, the person or company who commissioned the work will usually be the one who owns the copyright.
Moral rights laws aside (which only really come into play if you're based in Europe or Canada), this gives you full control over how your content can and can't be used once it's been delivered to you. You can publish it on your website, share it on social media, include excerpts in future blog posts or articles, and even enter a contract with a publisher. If the content generates any revenue, you are the sole recipient. The ghostwriter is not entitled to any further remuneration because they were paid to develop the manuscript as “work for hire” for the ghostwriting project.
As the creator of any content commissioned for a ghostwriting project, you (or your company) will retain full ownership of both the finished product and its associated copyrights. This gives you freedom over how and where you'd like to publish or share your content once it's been delivered to you, including using that content to land a book deal or otherwise generate a profit.
It is crucial to have a clear understanding of the legal mechanics of this when you hire a ghostwriter. They should provide you with a clear contract that spells out all of these intellectual property issues, and you should both sign this agreement before you proceed on the project. If the delineation of labor for a ghostwriting project is ever uncertain, unclear, or uncomfortable about topics of copyright or ownership, look elsewhere. You could run into problems down the road if everyone isn’t on the same page.
