Submitting a Query, Part 2: Your Ideas Will Not Be Stolen

In my last entry, I covered the basic elements a potential client should be willing to present to a ghostwriter. Today, I’m going to focus on a problem with approximately twenty percent of the queries I receive: the issue of secrecy. Some people who contact ghostwriters, agents, or editors don’t tell them what their projects are about for fear their ideas will be stolen. Everyone’s notes, rough drafts, and finished manuscripts are automatically copyrighted, even if not formally registered with the Library of Congress. (Go the the LOC website and look under “copyrights.”).  As I said in my last post on submitting queries, you have to follow professional protocols of the publishing industry.  You don’t have to go into extreme detail, but a paragraph or two saves time for everyone.