PrepTest 155, Section 1, Question 25
The rise of book megastores in the 1990s(56 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(6 more words not shown)
- ABookstore customers are(20 more words not shown)
- BIn the 1990s,(18 more words not shown)
- CIn the 1990s,(17 more words not shown)
- DBy 1996, there(11 more words not shown)
- EBooks that are(16 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
What happened to the paperbacks?
The opening claim covers book sales broadly: megastores supposedly helped best-sellers and hurt less commercial, more literary books. I can imagine a big store promoting a few popular titles and giving them its deepest discounts. That could make those books more attractive to buyers.
But the figures cover only hardcovers. Best-selling titles went from about 7 percent of hardcover sales to nearly twice that share. We need to be careful about treating that narrow comparison as the whole book market.
Perhaps literary readers can still buy the books they want as inexpensive paperbacks. If so, focusing on discounted hardcovers could miss an important part of the story. That's the direction I'd investigate for a weakener: what about the books and sales outside this hardcover comparison?
What we’re looking for
I'm not yet claiming a particular change happened in paperback sales. I want an answer that shows why the hardcover figures might fail to demonstrate the broad decline the author attributes to megastores.
Working the answers
- A
Recognizing a best-seller could make a customer more likely to buy it. That is compatible with the author's story about popular titles doing well. It doesn't explain why the hardcover figures would be misleading or show that literary books escaped the claimed decline. Nor does it establish that megastore discounts caused the pattern.
- B
Buying books by authors who previously had best-sellers doesn't challenge the claimed advantage of commercially successful writers. Also, an author's earlier success isn't the same thing as the current book being a best-seller. Either way, B gives us no competing explanation for the hardcover figures or the claimed loss of literary sales.
- CCorrect
This develops the paperback objection in a specific way: more literary works were initially published as paperbacks instead of hardcovers. That changes which books are even competing within the measured hardcover market. Best-sellers could account for a larger share because other kinds of books moved out of that category.
For a simple illustration, suppose best-sellers account for 7 of 100 hardcover sales. If the best-seller total stays at 7 while the hardcover total falls to 50 because other books move to paperback, the best-seller share becomes 14 percent. The share doubles without one extra best-seller being sold.
Those are hypothetical numbers, not a reconstruction of the actual market. They show why C matters: a change in publication format offers an alternative explanation for the percentage increase. It doesn't prove best-seller sales stayed flat. It undermines the author's confidence that megastores increased those sales and reduced literary sales overall.
- D
More titles in print means more distinct books are available. It doesn't tell us how many copies of those books people buy. A 20-percent increase in available titles could accompany many different sales patterns, so it doesn't answer the argument about purchases.
- E
Literary books receiving more display attention in independent stores fits the idea that megastores emphasize popular titles. But display space isn't a count of sales. This doesn't undermine the author's explanation or show what happened to literary purchases outside the hardcover figures.
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