PT155 S1 Q25 ExplanationThe rise of book megastores

Answer choices, explained

1. A

   No Impact11% picked this

   Bookstore customers are more likely to purchase a book that they have seen on a best-seller list than

   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%
2. B

   Unclear Impact7% picked this

   In the 1990s, bookstore customers' most frequent purchases were books written by authors who had already written

   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%
3. C

   Correct60% picked this

   In the 1990s, less commercial, more literary works increasingly had their initial publication in paperback editions

   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.

   60%
4. D

   No Impact10% picked this

   By 1996, there were about 20 percent more titles in print

   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.

   10%
5. E

   Strengthens, if anything12% picked this

   Books that are not expected to be best-sellers are featured more often in independent bookstores

   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.

   12%