Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get

Well. Just got my doubt clarified by Sayon offline

Let us say some 1000 copies were any ways going to be sold irrespective of whether the excerpt is published or not.

Let,
X = The number of people for whom seeing an excerpt of a book in a magazine provides an adequate substitute for reading the whole book.

Y = The number for whom the excerpt stimulates a desire to read the book.

[The publishers will only have increase in sales if the value of Y is > 0. Value of X has no impact on sales (infact it can reduce sales).]

Now according to A, X < Y.

Saukrit's doubt- even if X > Y there will be a SURE increase in sales.
But that's not the case. It can also mean Y = 0.
Is there a benefit in publishing excerpts in the mag if Y = 0? NO

So, A does make sense.

"The number of people for whom seeing an excerpt of a book in a magazine provides an adequate substitute for reading the whole book is smaller than the number for whom the excerpt stimulates a desire to read the book"

I am really unhappy with this answer (although all other answers are wrong, of course) because of the following scenario. Imagine there was no person in a population that had heard of book X. If excerpts are published now and 99% of the people do not buy the book, but for 1% it stimulates a desire to read the book, then sales still increase, but the proportion of people that view the excerpt as a substitute is still 99%.

Any thoughts GMATNinja?

I agree with RatneshS. If publishing the excerpt adds just 1 buyer of the book, the book sells more with the publication in the magazine than without it. Even if 99 out of 100 people that read the excerpt do not buy the book, the book still sells more by publishing the excerpt than without publishing the excerpt.
So A should be incorrect

These analyses only focus on the number of buyers that are ADDED by the excerpt. What about the number of buyers LOST by the excerpt? Imagine 10 people who are somewhat interested in the book (maybe they know the author), and they read the excerpt before deciding whether to buy the book. After reading the excerpt, nine of those people decide, "Well, that was an adequate substitute for reading the whole book. I don't need to buy it." Only 1 person decides to buy the book after reading the excerpt.

Sure, we've added one potential buyer, but we've lost NINE potential buyers. How many of those 10 would have purchased the book if the excerpt had NOT been published? We have no idea, so there is no point in entertaining these hypothetical situations.

We were asked which of 5 conclusions is best supported by the information in the passage. This is fundamentally different from, "Does choice (A) stand up to every hypothetical counterexample we can think of?" So before evaluating any choice... remember that we're not looking for the conclusion that MUST be true, and we're not eliminating a conclusion because we can't get behind it 100%.

Instead, our job is to pick the choice that is best supported by what we've already read. (A) works because it's logically possible, based on what the passage already tells us:

• We know that excerption results in a sure increase in sales.
• That increase could indicate that people who read the excerpt are actually stimulated to buy and read the entire book.
• We know that excerpting is among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get for a new book, so it's also possible that the number of excerpt readers who are stimulated to buy is greater than the number of excerpt readers who don't buy.

As you know, this is FAR from an ironclad conclusion. But unlike every other answer choice, this fits the purpose of the passage (to explain why excerption is among the most effective kinds of publicity) and follows through on the statements being presented by the author.

Every other conclusion we're offered veers away from the purpose of the passage and cannot be considered a logical conclusion to what we've already read. Instead, these other choices take us in totally different logical directions (B, E) or simply present random and highly specific factoids that are in no way supported by the passage (C, D).

I hope this helps! But I won't say this should make you happy, SchruteDwight, because if the GMAT isn't making us kinda unhappy, then it just wouldn't be the GMAT...

This seems like a faulty explanation. Even if lesser number of people's desire increases after reading the excerpt the sales will surely go up only by a lesser factor than before. D seems correct because a sure shot increase in sales has to be proportional to the circulation of the magazine. This doesn't need to be proven because this will always be the case as it is mentioned that sales will surely go up.

Experts, please let me know your thoughts on the below query:
In Option A, my understanding is that we are making a jump from desire to actual sales, i.e., we are saying that of "the number for whom the excerpt stimulates a desire to read the book", the number of people who actually buy the book will also be much higher compared to "the number of people for whom seeing an excerpt of a book in a magazine provides an adequate substitute for reading the whole book". Is this an assumption that we can always make that desire to buy something will translate into actually buying that thing or is the actual increase in sales supporting the statement that desire of people is translating into buying action?

While it’s likely that the desire to read a book will translate to buying that book, we can’t assume that desiring to read a book will necessarily translate to purchasing the book. But similarly, we can’t assume that just because someone feels reading the excerpt was an adequate substitute for reading the whole book, that individual won’t purchase the book.

The key here is that the question stem asks for which of the answer choices is best supported -- NOT which of the answer choices must be true. Check out this post for more on that.


The problem with (D) is that we don’t know that the relationship between the increase in sales and the circulation of the magazine is proportional. Perhaps the two are related, but just because the circulation of the magazine is 90% of the population does not mean the increase in sales must be precisely 90%. The passage does not support that these two items are proportional, so we can eliminate (D).

I hope that helps!

Proportional does not mean " To an extent, we can infer that the circulation of the magazine will have some effect on the sales of the book but proportional means if the circulation doubles, the sales of the book will double too."
Proportion means having a constant ratio. It can vary but in a ratio say for example 1:1 or 1: 2 or 1: 4 etc. or some exponential power like square root, cube root etc...
I think proportional is used only to refer that sale of the book has some sort of direct and positive correlation with the sale of the magazine.

From (A) what benefit do magazine publishers have? Why would the magazine pay to the book publisher?

The arguments talks about the effective publicity of new book. For effective publicity the author mentioned "to have excerpts of it/new book published in a high-circulation magazine (where to publish/ location) and soon before the book is published (when to publish/ time)". As a result of effective publicity sales will increase.

Now lets analyse option D: " The effectiveness of having excerpts of a book published in a magazine, measured in terms of increased sales of a book, is proportional to the circulation of the magazine in which the excerpts are published."

The effectiveness of publicity depends on the circulation of the magazine. This option only focus on the high-circulation of magazine i.e., only the location of publicity but not the time.

explanation:
case 1: Excerpts of new book published in a magazine 3 years prior to the date on which book is supposed to publish. The circulation of magazine is very high.

Case 2: Excerpts of new book published in a magazine 3 weeks prior to the date on which book is supposed to publish. The circulation of magazine is not very high.

conclusion: It is possible in case 1, after 3 years when book will be published, high circulation of magazine today may not contribute to the sales as much/proportionately as in case2, where the circulation of magazine is not very high but published 3 weeks prior.

Thanks.

Doesn't A assume that people knew about the book before seeing it in the magazine? If they didn't and won't know about it, the excerpt wouldn't have decreased sales from them. I don't think that the magazine readers who decide the excerpt is a good substitute necessarily have to have known about the book beforehand to be able to say it's a substitute. If I see a new book excerpt and read it. I can still decide from that if it's a good substitute, even without having known about the book before.

Hi Gmatninja, I'm not clear with all the explanations provided to support option A:

Among the more effective kinds of publicity that publishers can get for a new book is to have excerpts of it published in a high-circulation magazine soon before the book is published. The benefits of such excerption include not only a sure increase in sales but also a fee paid by the magazine to the book’s publisher.
Which of the following conclusions is best supported by the information above?

(A) The number of people for whom seeing an excerpt of a book in a magazine provides an adequate substitute for reading the whole book is smaller than the number for whom the excerpt stimulates a desire to read the book.

As everyone can see the passage states that such excerption would increase the sales.

Option A says only that the number of people for whom seeing an excerpt of a book in a magazine provides an adequate substitute for reading the whole book is smaller than the other group.

Even if we must pick the best answer, we must also be sure that the answer comply with the logic of the question (that is finding a conclusion that must be true with the given information)

Call group A (people for whom seeing an excerpt of a book in a magazine provides an adequate substitute for reading the whole book)
Call group B (the other group)
A + B = 100

Obviously the publisher sells some copies even without that ad, say 100 copies.
Now, Option A says that A < B (for example A = 25 and B = 75). clearly the number of sold copies increased.
But even if A > B (A = 75 and B =25) the number of copies increased.

Nothing in the passage brings us to conclude what option A states. It's irrelevant.

Regards.

KarishmaB GMATNinja MartyTargetTestPrep

The number analysis would be something like this: If 100 people were interested in buying the book initially and then the excerpt was released, 30 of those 100 people were not interested in buying anymore because the excerpt was a good enough substitute for them. But the excerpt has to bring in another '31 or more' people who were not interested initially but are interested now in buying the book. That is when the sales will increase due to the excerpt.

Now, I hope you see that the underlying assumption is clear.


I understood this logic very well but seems like we are making another assumption that these 100 peope who would have bought earlier are the same people who are also gonna read the excerpt.

Let's say The book would have sold 1000 copies, without putting the excerpt in such a magazine. And now the publishers want to attract the pool of potential buyers, so they decide to put the excerpt in a magazine.

Now, 100 people see the excerpt and
30 decide not to buy and 70 decide to buy.

Sale increased by 70 books.


70 decide not to buy and 30 decide to buy

Sales increased by 30 books.

Here, I assumed that 1000 books would have sold anyway without putting the excerpt.
If I don't assume this then how can I measure the "increased sale" of a new book. We can only increase something, if we have some existing number.

Please help

The passage talks about a "sure increase in sales," but doesn't define what these sales are increased from.

Because these are new books that have not yet been published, there are only a couple of options: perhaps people can purchase the book before it's published, and there is an increase in that number. Or, perhaps the passage is talking about an increase in expected sales. We don't need to know which case applies, or what the exact number is, to understand that having an excerpt published increases sales.

If there is a "sure increase in sales," what can we conclude?

Well, we'd know that publishing the excerpt attracted more people than it turned away. That's why (A) is the correct answer.

I hope that helps!

I may have been approaching the conclusion questions wrong all this while. Isn't the purpose of an option in the conclusion-type questions to provide a logical ending to the argument? Put another way, it should put a cap on the line of reasoning built by the argument. Option A is an underlying assumption, it helps explain the argument. How can it be a fitting conclusion to an argument?

Hi toohey.

The passage does not present an argument with evidence and a conclusion. Rather, the passage is made up entirely of statements of fact. Take another look.

So, no assumptions are made by the author of the passage.

Rather, choice (A) states a conclusion that is supported by the statements in the passage.

Lets say, before this effective method, the book publisher was able to sell 100 books by each available method respectively at that time. Now he applies the new stratagem. With the effective method contributing, now the publisher can reach to 100 more people, of whom 50 will buy the book and 50 will not buy the book, yet the total sale increases.
What is wrong in my reasoning!?

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MartyTargetTestPrep GMATNinja KarishmaB AjiteshArun

Although it is clear that except (A) none of the otpions come close to the argument, but say

1. People who are gonna buy the book anyway = 100
2. People getting dissuaded by magazine = 100
3. People who are gonna buy after reading the mag = 1
4. Total sale = 101

If above is true why does A say: The number of people for whom seeing an excerpt of a book in a magazine provides an adequate substitute for reading the whole book is smaller than the number for whom the excerpt stimulates a desire to read the book?

I must be misunderstanding something!!­