Penguin sues authors over advances: right or wrong?

According to Smoking Gun, Penguin Books has filed a lawsuit against several authors who failed to deliver books at a certain time for which they received hefty advances. The Penguin Group’s New York State Supreme Court has ruled this is breach of contract and the authors must pay their advances back even though the money went to living expenses, so forth, and is probably gone by now.

When an author gets a book contract with a large house such as Penguin, it’s not unusual to get at least a...