Argument195

TOPIC: ARGUMENT195 - The following is a letter from an editor at Liber Publishing Company to the company's president.
"In recent years, Liber has unfortunately moved away from its original mission: to publish the works of regional small-town authors instead of those of big-city authors. Just last year, 90 percent of the novels we published were written by authors who maintain a residence in a big city. Although this change must have been intended to increase profits, it has obviously backfired, because Liber is now in serious financial trouble. The only way to address this problem is to return to our original mission. If we return to publishing only the works of regional small-town authors, our financial troubles will soon be resolved."
WORDS: 472 TIME: 00:48:50 DATE: 2008-3-9 21:30:58

At first glance, it seems somewhat reasonable that Liber have certain excuses to return to publishing works of small-town authors as the speaker presents; however, close scrutiny of the evidence the arguer cites unveils that the argument actually suffers from several vital flaws. For instance, a fact, 90 percent of the novels written by authors from big cities, does not indicate Liber's main profits come from novels, where other literatures are possible. Moreover, ways to address Liber's financial trouble should not be limited merely to publishing works of regional small-town authors. Besides, some other flaws exist. These flaws above would be discussed in details respectively.

As a thresh matter, the speaker makes a mistake that he attributes current financial trouble to what they did in last year, in which 90 percent of novels were written by authors of big cities. In effect, it is possible that novels is not the majority of publications by Liber. The true case, for instance, may be that textbooks are the most important publications, instead of novels. Consequently, whether novels are among the best-selling list is not paramount when textbooks have been sold out at a number of 100,000, but novels only a number of 100. Under this circumstance, Liber would not blame their financial problem to novels, and whether these novels are composed by authors from small-town or big-city does not matter at all.

Secondly, the speaker urges that Liber should undoubtedly return to publishing what they did years ago. In effect, the arguer fails to take into account that the most comprehensive readers play a key role in Liber's profits. Because flavor of readers may vary from year to year, Liber's decision goes the wrong direction. For instance, poet is becoming more and more broadly popular among the masses in recent years, and this trend will withstand in predicted future. Therefore, Liber's financial trouble will surely be deteriorated if Liber returned to publishing more novels written by big-city authors.

A third flaw has to do with the number of writers in regional small town. Consider, for instance, most of small-town novel authors have moved their houses to other districts as a result of unfortunately recognizing that Liber has moved away from its original policy of publishing. The number of authors who compose novels is relatively much small. If Liber resumes publishing only the works of regional small-town authors, they may embarrassedly discover that no one in small town composes novels and then send novels to Liber for publishing. Thereby, Liber's financial problem will be even worse.

In sum, the argument actually has several flaws as discussed above, and is not convincing as it stands. To solidify the argument, the arguer would have to provide evidence that the majority of Liber's publications is novel, and demonstrate that novel authors in small town still live where they were.