Logical Reasoning

PT155 · S1 · Q25 The rise of book megastores

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The rise of book megastores in the 1990s increased sales of best-sellers, but decreased sales of less commercial, more literary books.

Conclusion

The rise of book megastores in 90s increased sales of best-sellers and decreased sales of less commercial, more literary books.

Evidence

1986: 7% of hardcovers sold were best-sellers. 1996: 14% of hardcovers sold were best-sellers.

Megastores can offer deeper discounts than indie stores and they offer their biggest discounts on best-selling hardcovers.

Evaluate

The author is looking at a Curious Comparison (7% vs. 14%) and trying to explain what caused it in her conclusion, so we can use our Explain Curious Fact mindset.

Curious Fact ... how come best-sellers went from being 7% of hardcover sales to 14% from 1986 to 1996?

Author's Explanation ... megabook stores became more popular during that time, offered their biggest discounts on hardcover best-sellers, and thus made more and more of the book buying public choose a best-seller hardcover over a less commercial, more literary hardcover.

As always, our job is to assess this template by asking, - Could there be some Alternate Explanation for the curious fact? - How plausible is the Author's Explanation?

Goal

Since this is Weaken, we either want to find an answer suggesting a different explanation for why best-sellers went from being 7% of hardcover to 14% of hardcover sales (maybe during that time period best-sellers drastically improved their cover design to make them more alluring, or publishers succeeded in promoting their best-sellers better using billboards and subway ads).

Or we want an answer hurting the plausibility of the story that more superstores led to more best-sellers being heavily discounted which led to more customers choosing to buy a best-seller over a less commercial, more literary book.

25.

Which one of the following, if true, most weakens the argument?

Bookstore customers are more likely
No Impact
This is something that was just as true in 1986 as it was in 1996. Since it doesn't speak to anything that changed in that time period, it's not offering an Alternate Explanation. And since it's making it seem like people are inclined to buy best-sellers it's very compatible with the author's explanation.
11% picked this
In the 1990s, bookstore customers'
Unclear Impact
We don't know if what we're being told here was only true for the 90s. Maybe this was also true in the 80s. Can we say, "The real reason that best-sellers went from 7% to 14% of hardcovers isn't because of the rise of superstores offering big discounts on them, it's because people typically purchase books written by an author who at some point wrote a best-seller"? No. Not only does this not work because there's no indication that this preference for best-selling authors was different in the 90s than it was at other times, but buying a book written by an author who in the past had a best-seller doesn't mean that you're currently buying a best-seller. So it makes it even harder to judge the value / impact of this answer.
7% picked this
Correct
In the 1990s, less commercial,
Why this is right
This provides an Alternate Explanation for why best-sellers went from 7% to 14% of hardcover sales. It wasn't because customers were being increasingly lured into buying best-sellers by emerging megastores that offered big sales on such books, it was because the other type of book (non-bestsellers) was increasingly not available in hardback. In other words, there might have been no decrease at all in sales of less commercial, more literary works. It may have just been a reallocation of sales into different categories, in which a rising percentage of paperback sales were now for these literary books while a rising percentage of hardback sales were the best-sellers. This answer does imply a difference between the 90s and the 80s, because it uses the adverb increasingly.
Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
62% picked this
By 1996, there were about
No Impact
We might have worried with this argument that we were being tested on a % vs. # issue. The evidence is about a higher percent of best-selling hardbacks sold and a lower percent of literary hardbacks sold. Meanwhile, the conclusion sounds like it's more about raw numbers, because it thinks that there are increased sales of bestsellers and decreased sales of literary ones. 7% of 1000 books sold is more sales than 14% of 100 books sold, so the raw number of books sold could potentially be relevant to assessing whether there truly are increased / decreased sales. But ... this answer is only about how many titles are in print, not how many books are sold. Unless books are removed from print faster than new ones are introduced, the total number of books in print will always keep rising over time, but that doesn't mean that the number of books purchased each year has risen.
9% picked this
Books that are not expected
Strengthens, if anything
This answer sort of reinforces the idea that megastores help drive sales of best-sellers while indie bookstores help drive sales of less commercial books. The author is basing her logic off this asymmetry, which is why she concludes that the rise in megastores will explain a rise is sales of best-sellers and a decrease in sales of the less commercial books.
11% picked this

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