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P.S. Why "a little extra" for the salary? If it takes 6 months to write, he should get 6 months of salary (I don't specify which is the right salary per month for a writer, though).
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Well first s/he deserves some holidays. Also in the case of the publisher "buying" the book as complete work the little extra should satisfy for "risks" that author had carried, like having an accident middle in the work, or so. If you are contracted that risk would have to carry the employer.
I also want to highlight, I consider within the 6 months in this example not only the time spent actually creating the text, but also the time you need to do your research, to create the charactersets, to draw up the story, and so on.
Yes science runs roughly like you said, it are most of the time say 2 years leap of faith, and when you fail badly in this time, your contract won't get prolonged. Permanent positions are getting really rare however. I think nowadays even most young professors only get 6 year contracts.
I think this situation evolved, because in science you cannot even use the "sales" revenues as messurement of quality. So a system similar to authorship of books could not even work. (Usually quality is assest ex-post, by the number of times being cited)
Yes, I think it would be benefitable for most non-super-star authors as well as society to be contracted in the way described. But the publishers are a powerfull entity, and they don't want that. They don't want to take the risk, of the author to be good/bad even for a shorter time. Why should they, if they can roll off almost all risk to the author (except printing costs), and leave the author with the problem, how to make as far as possible a "normal" life as author.