
Can a Ghostwriter Steal Your Story?
A concern that I hear often from potential clients is that they want to look after their idea – their intellectual property. They’re concerned that if they talk to a ghostwriter about their book but don’t actually go ahead to work with them, they might find out a few months later that a book just like theirs has hit the market!
There’s no need to worry about this, as I’ll explain in this post – and if you do still feel some anxiety, I’ll also detail some steps you can take to prevent it from happening.
Legal Guidelines
First of all, it would be illegal for a ghostwriter to steal your story.
The term ‘intellectual property’ exists for a reason, and it is a legal one. It means that the ideas you have are your own – a form of property. If someone takes your property without your consent, that is called theft. In other words, anyone writing your book idea for you will be committing theft, and you would be able to take legal action against them.
It should be easy to establish after the fact that you have had a meeting with the ghostwriter – whether over email, social media messages, phone records, or simply location history, there is always a digital trail nowadays. Once the meeting has been established, it should be easy work for any lawyer to prove that you first came up with the idea and that the ghostwriter stole it.
Because of this, it’s very unlikely that a ghostwriter would risk stealing any intellectual property. It’s not the only reason to put them off, either.
Moral and Reputational Implications
It’s obviously morally wrong to steal someone’s idea and profit from it, so you’ll likely find that most ghostwriters would completely balk at the idea simply from a moral standpoint.
Even if that doesn’t concern the person in question, there is another factor that might make them think twice. The damage to their reputation would be significant if they were caught stealing an idea from a client. Trust is absolutely essential to the relationship between a ghostwriter and their clients. If this came out, that ghostwriter would find it very difficult to be hired ever again, and certainly not at any kind of high-end level.
Any ghostwriter who took this step would very much need to have a back-up career in mind – so it becomes even more unlikely that anyone would ever take that much of a risk.
Idea Frequency
Some people believe that ghostwriters are authors who don’t have ideas of their own, but this is usually pretty far from the truth. Personally, I have so many ideas in my head that I already know I will never have enough time to write them all down, even if I never have another in the rest of my life. I’ve already published 22 books under my own name, with another five set to come out across 2024 and 2025, so I certainly have no dearth of ideas.
The truth about ideas is that just about everyone has at least one. When I talk to people at networking events or in casual social gatherings and they find out that I’m a ghostwriter, almost everyone will tell me that they have always wanted to write a certain book they’ve had in their mind.
What makes a book is not just the idea, but the execution of that idea. In fact, even if someone did steal your idea, they would never execute it in the same way that you would. If a hundred authors all wrote a book based on the same idea, we would have a hundred different books.
Since most people already have enough ideas, and even using the same idea they would get different results, there’s less of a reason for you to worry about your idea being stolen. It’s simply very unlikely to happen, and even if it did, it wouldn’t prevent you from putting out your own book.
Preventing Theft
Finally, if you’re still not sure your idea is safe, there are some steps you can take in order to protect it. Try these tips to feel more comfortable talking to ghostwriters about your idea:
- Make sure that you record all of your correspondence. Save copies of emails and messages wherever they happen, and if you’re meeting over Zoom or other similar software, you can record the session for posterity
- Ask your ghostwriter to sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) that prevents them from sharing or using your idea. Most ghostwriters will be very happy to do so – I certainly don’t mind signing them whenever a client asks
- Try to only work with ghostwriters who have lots of experience and a long record of good results. Ghostwriters who are more established know the ropes and the rules, and they have no reason to try to wreck their own careers!
- Make sure that your contract for the work your ghostwriter will undertake includes clauses about who owns the concepts and ideas in the book, so that they have no legal basis to get away with taking them
Hopefully, these steps will help you to feel safe enough to work with a ghostwriter without worrying about losing your idea.
If you’re ready to work with someone now that you know the risk is so low, feel free to reach out to me. I’m happy to exchange an NDA before we meet if you need to put your mind at ease. Since you know my background now, you can also feel confident that I won’t ever need your idea – I have far too many of my own!
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