PrepTest 155

This would apply to all bookstore customers, whether they're shopping at megastores or not, so it wouldn't strengthen or weaken a conclusion that's about megastores' impact on the book market. This could be true whether the conclusion is true or false.

This answer choice just doesn't give us enough information to either strengthen or weaken the argument. Just because an author wrote one bestseller doesn't mean all their future books are commercial or unliterary. In fact, some previously best-selling authors might write less commercial, more literary works in the future. So even if this answer choice is true, we still don't know if people are buying more bestsellers and fewer non-commercial, literary books, and we still don't know what megastores have to do with it.

Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Weaken

Stimulus Summary:
Book megastores showed up in the '90s and boosted bestsellers' sales, but hurt less commercial, more literary books' sales. In 1986, 7% of hardcover sales were best-selling hardcovers. That figured doubled by 1996. Megastores give their biggest discounts on best-selling hardcovers, which makes people less likely to buy other hardcovers.

Strategy Overview:

1. Argument or facts? Always argument, so identify premises and conclusions of argument
2. Anticipate why the premises are not enough to show that the conclusion is true
   1. Causal argument? Look for answer choice that:
      1. Shows possible alternate cause
      2. Shows cause without effect
      3. Shows effect without cause
      4. Shows the cause and effect are reversed
   2. If not causal argument, anticipate ways to worsen problem with argument
3. Use anticipations to select the answer choice that, if true, would weaken argument

Answer Anticipation:
Our ultimate goal is to find the answer choice that weakens the argument. However, it's much easier to do that if we first break down the argument and identify its flaws. Then, weakening the argument is only a matter of finding the answer choice that exploits that flaw.

Causation flaws are rampant on Weaken questions, and this argument is definitely causal. It claims that book megastores caused lower sales of less commercial, more literary books. The correct answer could present alternative explanation for that decline.

But there's something else strange here, too. The conclusion talks about "books," but every premise only discusses hardcovers. What happened to paperback books? We can expect the correct answer choice to point out this equivocation, perhaps by showing that paperback versions of less commercial, more literary books are flourishing in the era of book megastores.

Answer Choice Explanation:
Here's what we were looking for! If publishers aren't printing less commercial, more literary books in hardcover, it makes perfect sense that people aren't buying hardcover versions of these works. How could you buy something nobody's selling? This presents an alternative explanation for the decline of hardcover versions of non-commercial, literary books and addresses the equivocation between hardcover books and books in general. Perfect.

Key Takeaway:
Equiviocations (jumping from one idea to a related, but different idea) happened all the time on the LSAT. To weaken an equivocation, you just need to address that distiction. If you have a conclusion about "tomatoes" and premises about only "cherry tomatoes," then pointing out that not all tomatoes are cherry tomatoes will always weaken the argument.

This neither strengthens nor weakens the argument because the argument is about what people are buying, not what's in print.

If anything, this might strengthen the argument that book megastores are driving increased sales of bestsellers at the expense of less commercial, more literary books. If megastores aren't featuring the non-bestselling books, there's a good case that megastores probably are hurting those books.