#5 - Must Be True

[sdb606]

I still don't understand why C is wrong. I don't see any justification to say the "point of sale" must always be retail. If C is true, the point of sale would be the publisher, not retail.

C has more going for it than A. It accommodates Lines 16-20 which says there will be no cost for warehousing and retail. If costs of warehousing are eliminated, then how would it be possible to store paper and binding materials? It would have to be free.

[Adam Tyson]

While the passage does not prove that all point of sale machines will be found at retail locations, sdb606, it also does not suggest that publishers will cut distributors and retailers out of the loop. That would mean that either a consumer would order a book from a publisher, who would then use a kiosk in their facilities to print that one book and ship it to the consumer (which would contradict the claim about eliminating the cost of shipping books), or kiosks accessible directly to consumers would only be located either at the publishers' physical locations or else solely as freestanding units, like a Redbox machine standing out in the middle of a field or a parking lot. Isn't it possible that those kiosks will be found in retail locations? Couldn't they be inside actual bookstores, even if those stores look very different from current bookstores, maybe being primarily small places with limited displays and multiple kiosks? And couldn't distributors be involved in filling those machines with paper and binding materials, and servicing the machines, and even contracting with locations to place those machines? If not, where in the passage do you find evidence to support that most publishers will have no distributors or retailers involved in the supply chain?

I see your concern about answer A, but I think you need to read it in the broader context. The passage isn't suggesting that warehouses in the publishing industry will cease to exist, but that they will not need to warehouse books. The paper and binding materials that go into the kiosks will still have some cost involved, and they will need to be stored somewhere. Warehousing costs might decrease, perhaps substantially, but a literal reading of the phrase "thereby eliminating the costs of warehousing" would not, in this case, make sense. It must be taken in the larger context, which is about the storage, shipping, and handling of pre-printed physical books.

One last thing, and that is that you must always strive on the LSAT to understand not just why the correct answer is correct, but why the authors of this test believe it to be correct. Get into their heads and see it from their point of view, rather than resisting the credited answer and arguing that it cannot be correct. There's a great blog post on that very subject that is well worth the time to read it, and you should check it out here:

https://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/you-ca ... -the-lsat/

Shifting your mindset towards "what were they thinking" and away from "is this answer correct" can have a profound impact on anyone's LSAT performance. I find it especially helpful to think about why they included a certain answer choice, like answer C here, and how they hoped to trick us with it. Once we see why they felt that answer was not correct, we can get much better at eliminating wrong answers on our way to finding the right ones!