The phrase "author advances" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used in contexts where you are discussing the progress or development made by an author in their work or ideas.
Example: "In this chapter, the author advances a compelling argument for the importance of environmental conservation."
Alternatives: "the author proposes" or "the author puts forth".
Author advances and bookseller returns have long troubled the publishing industry.
The remaining $4.60 must pay for rent, editors, a sales force, and any write-offs of unearned author advances.
As for fears that the merger would dilute competition and push down author advances, this is not the case: "We are acquiring very aggressively".
That is because paperbacks traditionally mean smaller author advances and smaller marketing and advertising budgets and smaller book tours, if any.
So the Amazon–Hachette deal may be good for most writers simply because it is good for publishers, who can (at least theoretically) invest in author advances when they make money.
The result is that author advances have plummeted, Amazon now controls vast swathes of the industry, bookstores are closing across the Western world and yet at no time in history have more people been reading.
Now, I'm not saying they are too high — publishers still have big initial investments to recoup (author advance, editing, indexing, design, promotion and so on).
In short, Doubleday will make back its investment in hardcover -- remember, there's no author advance, although lord knows what Dante would command in today's market -- and "then profits will come in two or three or four years as the paperback enters the college market".
The imprint operates on a relatively shoestring budget, paying its authors advances that are usually less than $5,000, Ms. Goldman said.
The publishing world is all caught up in weighty questions about the Kindle and other such devices: Will they help or hurt book sales and authors' advances?
Generally first novels have an initial printing of 8,000 to 15,000 copies; authors' advances are often about $10,000, depending upon the breadth of rights the publisher has purchased.
