Thanks for using Author!
The footer text can be changed in the Pro version, but if you’d like to edit the footer.php file, you can delete lines 11-15 and replace it with plain text. The PHP there is needed to make the text filterable and translatable, but that’s not necessary if you type in your own text manually.
I try to delete these lines but i get the following error message.
Unable to communicate back with site to check for fatal errors, so the PHP change was reverted. You will need to upload your PHP file change by some other means, such as by using SFTP.
If you already made edits to footer.php then my recommendation for lines 11-15 might not have matched.
This is the code you want to remove, including the opening and closing PHP tags:
<?php
$footer_text = sprintf( __( '<a href="%1$s" rel="nofollow">%2$s WordPress Theme</a> by Compete Themes', 'author' ), 'https://www.competethemes.com/author/', wp_get_theme( get_template() ) );
$footer_text = apply_filters( 'ct_author_footer_text', $footer_text );
echo do_shortcode( wp_kses_post( $footer_text ) );
?>