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This is an interesting discussion considering I've paid for fluff and writers before and end up with different results, some positive and some not. Since the idea of contracts was brought up or at least something more tangible to secure someone's work from being taken advantage of, this brings up some questions.

If someone wanted to pay for writing work done, what do you think is an adequate way to compensate? Do you prefer per project, hourly or based on words or some other method? The reason I ask is because the results aren't always equal through similar methods of compensation and I'm not sure those are the best routes either.

For example I've seen writers do great work based on word count, but I've also seen them add a lot of extra words which ends up confusing the flow of the writing or overall just to increase word count. Similar to college days of turning one paragraph into a page report for an essay, but not really adding anything to what was covered in the paragraph (slight exaggeration but you get the idea). If looking at hourly, people work at different rates and it seems the amount work you get doesn't always match the time spent into it. So how do you gauge to properly and adequately compensate for the effort expended?

Then those people that instead of getting paid early on, looking for a contract in case something goes to retail to make millions (exaggeration but I understand the fear, after-all it happened to Stan Lee); What do you feel is adequate in making a writer feel secure for compensation? Is it based on the amount of work contributed compared to the overall cost? If you roughly estimate based on word count that WriterA contributed at least 10% of the work for a rule/lore book, then should they be getting 10% of the profit or should it simply just be a buyout since they were working within the confines of someone else's IP?