If the scenario described in the first two paragraphs were to become true, then which one of the following would most...

filozinni on May 30, 2020

I also had the same thought process and am wondering about the same thing. Could anyone provide an explanation please?

fdaniel on July 30, 2020

Hello, I also have the same question as above. The author references that the individual printing could even take place by "machines." This helped me immediately eliminate A. There also is decent explanation for how authors will make more because it gives them more control. This is why I chose C. I think it can be inferred that A would be the only option for the traditional companies to remain competitive. I do not think this is more likely than C. Could you please explain how we eliminate C and find strong support for A?

EugeneC on August 15, 2020

People no longer need storage for books; however, the author believes that more books my end up being printed, albeit not by factories, but by money small machines. Where do these machines get the materials for printing? I chose A because the more books printed would necessitate some storage system for those raw resources, IE warehouses. I may be wrong though. I'll see if I can get someone more qualified to look at this tonight.

cfraser109 on August 18, 2020

hello, following up on this conversation - why A and not C??

Meredith on September 19, 2020

Can an instructor please answer why C is incorrect?

Enola on September 26, 2020

same question as above

Enola on September 26, 2020

same question as above

Gabe85 on September 27, 2020

Same question as everyone else, would like to add briefly my (apparently incorrect) thought process:

In like 17-18, the author specifically refers to "thereby eliminating the costs of warehousing" in regards to having digital copies that are "printed and bound on demand at point of sale by machines" (7-8).

"...eliminating the costs of warehousing, shipping books to wholesalers and to retail stores, displaying physical books in retail stores, and returning unsold books to publishers..." (17-20).

I chose C because the passage references eliminating costs warehouses and costs for displaying physical books in retail stores, so from this, it would seem that publishers could skip distributors and sell their own books.

Now I would like to qualify this. Clearly, this is somewhat of a leap and not explicitly stated, or really that strongly implied. However, given that B, D, and E were wrong, out of scope, and/or irrelevant, the answer was between A and C.

So based on the new world of books described in the reading, is it POSSIBLE to have A and C? Absolutely. However, what is mentioned/implied in the text?

Answer A states that the need for warehousing will shift, but the only reference we have to warehousing is that the cost of publishing a book online "eliminates" the cost of warehousing.

For answer C, the author references eliminating costs for displaying physical books in retail stores.

So while C is at best implied and possibly a bit of an extrapolation from the text, it seems far less of a leap in logic since both C and the passage reference an eliminated cost, while A is a shift in cost, but in the passage is stated as potentially eliminated.

The only way I see A being correct is if I disregard the passage and just use my own interpretation of what is likely to happen in the world in general. Technically, the question asks what is "most likely the case," it does not actually asked what would be implied from the passage. So, if one thinks publishers could sell books with a higher cost/benefit then if they give amazon a cut, then I suppose it's more likely that they have many machines than eliminating retailers.

Greatly appreciate any help and/or critique, thank you!

NickJFall on June 27, 2021

Help please. Why (a) and not (c)?

NickJFall on June 27, 2021

Help please. Why (a) and not (c)?

Mjb5na on July 13, 2021

Can an instructor please answer why C is incorrect?

DylanMorris on August 1, 2021

Also looking for the same answers to be explained as the 5+ other students above...

Morad on October 7, 2021

Hi, not a tutor, but I've been thinking on this question for a bit as well. I also picked answer choice C) but realized I've fallen prey to my own assumptions and over thought this one.

The question reads: "If the scenario described in the first two paragraphs were to become true, then which one of the following would most likely be the case?"

The scenarios in question are that digital publishing becomes popular, necessitating that digital files of books are abundant enough to supplant traditional publishing methods and machines are used to publish these digital books on demand at regional sites. So let's take a step back and examine what this means.

Supplanting traditional publishing means that we're overhauling the current economic model of traditional publishing. This model is spelled out for us in lines 17-20:

"...the costs of warehousing, shipping books to wholesalers and to retail stores, displaying physical books in retail stores, and returning unsold books to publishers."

The new model, per lines 26-29, will include: "...a catalog of printable digitized books [that] becomes large enough to justify investment in book printing machines at numerous regional sites.

So with this in mind, let's look at answer choice C): "Most publishers will sell their own books individually and will not use distributors or retailers."

There is nothing about this economic change that includes a discussion of HOW exactly consumers will get their books beyond purchasing them online and possibly retrieving them from a nearby location that has a dedicated machine to print their books.

There's also nothing in the passage that discounts that publishers may still need distributors or retailers to deliver their books to consumers.
A possible future exists where publishers could evolve into a business that focuses primarily on creating printable digital books and then makes a deal with retailers, who own the prized book making machines, that allows their nearby locations print the books which the publisher created. It could or could not happen - doesn't really matter. The point is, we have no claim about how the business model for large publishers (or small ones for that matter) will react to the transformation taking place. So answer choice C) is unsupported.

What we DO know is that we still need lots of paper because we're going to do a lot of publishing, and we're definitely not going to need to supply many books. This directly touches on the lines 16-20 that we mentioned earlier that describe the OLD economic model that we overhauled. So this answer choice is much more supported.

I realized my mistake was simply not sticking to the facts mentioned in the passage and not properly understanding the scope of the question. In this case, it's extremely important to understand what's being asked in the question because it's the difference in this question being very hard or very easy.

Hope this helps!

JonJay on July 5, 2022

Looks like it's been awhile since someone has asked a question about this particular question or, for that matter, attempted to answer it. The answer above is pretty solid, but I have some additional thoughts that I'm confident will be valuable in explaining why Answer Choice 'A' is correct and why Answer Choice 'C' is incorrect. I, too, am not a tutor. Just a test taker like you all who got fooled into selected Answer Choice C, so please take what I say with a massive grain of salt.

Now...getting to Answer Choice (C) - "Most publishers will sell their own books individually and will not use distributors or retailers."

After review, I know this is wrong, because like the person who commented before me, I allowed outside assumptions to drive my selection process. Keeping in mind the gist of the question is "If the scenario described in paragraphs 1 and 2 come true, which of the following is most likely..."

The scenario described is a model in which physical books are replaced by machines that will print books on demand based on digitized copies of these books. In my head, I jumped to the conclusion that this would mean that publishers would switch to a Business-to-Consumer model as opposed to the Business-to-Business model they use for physical books. However, who is to say that publishers wouldn't want to distribute electronically through retailers even after this shift?

The correct answer, Answer Choice A - "The need for warehousing will shift mainly from that of individual books to that of paper and binding material to make books."

The reason why this is correct is because in lines 6-10, the following is stated, "But it is more likely, I believe, that most digital files of books will be printed and bound on demand at point of sale by machines that can quickly and inexpensively make single copies that are indistinguishable from books made in factories."

In following with the question, this is most likely to lead to warehouses shifting away from warehousing physical books to warehousing the constituent parts of physical books to be on demand for the printing of such books, i.e. paper and binding material.

If there's anything I've learned from studying the LSAT, it's humility. Hope this helps.