[avantman42]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Are you trying to understand how the system works, or are you trying to score internet debating points?

My intention was to engage in honest argument. I pointed out to Steve that I thought he'd made a mistake. Since you had only implied, rather than outright stated, that advances are high enough to remove worries about paying bills, I also said that I might have mis-read your post. Perhaps you'd like to let us both know whether I had mis-read you?

As for the part about advances, I'm simply trying to find some evidence one way or the other. Note that I'm asking about non-fiction advances specifically, not fiction. Steve said "a lot of non-fiction writing is incompatible with having a continuous day job due to need to spend months traveling to research sites." I don't disagree with that, and I've seen people (including Steve, I think) state that non-fiction advances pay for an author's expenses while they research and write the book. I'm sure that was true in the past, but since fiction advances are smaller than they used to be, it may be that non-fiction advances are too. I don't know if they are or not, but I'd like to find out.

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Here is one article that I read on advances

http://work.chron.com/average-author...book-7181.html

It mentions in the article, that advances were originally intended to allow the author to finish his or her book. You might be surprised how far $80K will go for someone living frugally.

Thanks for the link, but the only mention of non-fiction advances seems to be this sentence: "Publishers pay authors advances that range from as little as $1,000 to amounts in the high six figures for fiction and non-fiction." Frankly, that doesn't tell me much.

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Here is another article that discusses author earnings, written in Jan 2015.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...l-350pa-survey

That article doesn't mention how much authors get paid as advances at all, so I don't see how it's relevant to my question.

Originally Posted by pwalker8

In the non fiction world, that $80K check might let a professor spend the summer researching his book rather than teaching summer classes.

I agree. However, the article that gave that figure also says that publishers typically pay a third or a half in advance, so after the agent's 15% cut, the professor would have $22,666.66 or $34,000 for the summer. That'd be plenty for me, but I'm not a professor

All that still doesn't answer the question of what the current average advance is. $80,000 was apparently the average in 2012. That was three years ago. Has it increased? Decreased? Stayed the same?