Ghostwriting Contract: Credit, Confidentiality and Rights

Ghostwriting is unusual: your job is to write something that will be published under someone else's name. That creates questions a normal writing contract doesn't answer. Can you ever say you wrote it? Who owns the interview recordings? What if the client's co-founder rewrites half of it and then blames you?

Whether you ghostwrite LinkedIn posts, blog articles, speeches or a full book, these are the points to agree before the first interview.

Decide one of these up front:

• Full anonymity: you never mention the work.
• Private portfolio: you can show samples privately to prospective clients under NDA, but not publicly.
• Acknowledgement: a credit such as "with [your name]" or a mention in the acknowledgements.

Write it into the agreement. The attribution clause and portfolio rights clause cover the options. Some ghostwriters charge a premium for full anonymity, since it removes the work from their marketing.

The client will share personal stories, business plans and sometimes sensitive details. You need a confidentiality clause that protects them, and it is fair to ask that the arrangement itself is also confidential if that suits you. Say how interview recordings and notes are stored and when they are deleted; if personal data is involved, add a data protection clause.

The client usually needs to own the text outright to publish it under their name. Transfer rights on full payment, not on delivery, with an IP transfer clause. In some countries authors have moral rights, such as the right to be credited, that are treated differently from copyright; the moral rights clause explains the common wording. If this matters for a large project, check how it works where you live.

• Interviews: how many, how long, and what happens if the client cancels at short notice.
• Drafts: outline first, then chapter or article drafts, each approved before the next.
• Revisions: a set number of rounds per draft; heavy rewrites by the client end your responsibility for the quality of that section.
• Payment: for long projects, split into a deposit and milestones (e.g. outline approved, halfway, final draft). A kill fee clause protects you if the client abandons the project.

The ghostwriting agreement template puts these together.

Attribution:
"Writer will not be credited as author of the Work and will not publicly disclose Writer's involvement, except that Writer may share excerpts privately with prospective clients under a duty of confidentiality, after publication."

Interviews and materials:
"Client will make itself available for up to [X] interviews of up to 60 minutes each. Interviews cancelled with less than 24 hours' notice count as held. Writer will store recordings securely and delete them within [X] days of final delivery unless Client asks for copies."

Client rewrites:
"Where Client or a third party materially rewrites any part of the Work, Writer is not responsible for the accuracy or quality of the rewritten sections."

A founder wants a 50,000-word business book. A typical structure:

1. Deposit on signing, which reserves the writer's time.
2. Interviews and outline: six recorded interviews, then a chapter outline for approval. Payment due on approval.
3. First half of the manuscript delivered chapter by chapter, one revision round per chapter. Payment due at the halfway point.
4. Second half and full manuscript, one final revision pass. Final payment on delivery of the finished manuscript; rights transfer once it is paid.

If the founder abandons the project after the outline, the kill fee and the milestone payments already received cover the work done.

• Promising anonymity without pricing it, then losing the project as a portfolio piece.
• Unlimited interviews. Each one is research, transcription and synthesis time.
• Rights transferring on delivery of each chapter instead of on payment.
• No rule for heavy client edits, leaving you responsible for sections you didn't write.
• Starting a long project with a single final payment. Months of work should be split into milestones.

Can I list ghostwriting as a service on my website? Usually yes, as long as you don't name clients or projects covered by confidentiality.

Who owns the interview recordings? Decide it in the contract. A common approach is that the client can request copies and the writer deletes them after a set period.

Should the fee change if the client wants a credit line for me? Some writers charge less when they're credited, because the work then markets their business too.

Draft it now with Clinch: describe the job in a sentence, get a clean draft, send one link. Your client signs from their phone without an account, and the deposit is paid in the same step.