argument练习，求拍（附argument）
The following appeared as part of a memorandum issued by the managing editor of Deceus, a large publishing house.
“Our least-successful line of books over the past three years has been the Angelus line of romance thriller novels. The covers of books in the Angelus line feature the main characters depicted in an action pose. Over the same period, competing publishing houses have noticeably decreased their offerings in the genre of romance thrillers and have moved away from picturing main characters on book covers. Furthermore, the cost of advances and royalties to authors who write romance thrillers has been steadily increasing. Therefore, Deceus Publishing should eliminate the Angelus line of romance thriller novels.”
Analyze the above argument:
The argument claims that because competing publishing houses have decreased their romance thriller novels and moved away main characters from book covers, and because cost of advances and royalties to romance thriller novel author has been steadily increasing, Deceus Publishing should eliminate their least-successful line of books, Angelus, the book covers of which feature the main characters. Although the argument seems well-structured and reasonable at first glance, the premises outlined in the argument either have nothing to do with the conclusion or do not necessarily lead to the conclusion. In fact, the argument would be more cogent if it proved that romance thriller novels were really unpopular and that there existed an inherent connection between sales and depicting main characters on book covers.
Firstly, while the argument tells us that the unsuccessful Angelus depicts the main characters on book covers and that competitors have removed their main characters from covers, it does not provide any evidence about the connection between the failure of Angelus and depicting main characters on book covers. And the fact that competitors have rid their book covers of main characters does not help to make the idea clearer. Perhaps what book cover depicts is totally irrelevant to its appeal to readers. Therefore, I do not think the facts about book covers make the argument more persuasive unless the author provides more information such as the sales before and after changing the book covers under the condition that other factors do not change.
Secondly, the argument fails to prove the unpopularity of romance thriller novels. In the argument, the only evidence that seems to make us believe that romance thriller novels are no longer popular is that competing publishing houses have decreased the production of this kind of books. However, this by no means can directly lead to the conclusion that Deceus Publishing should also stop publishing romance thriller novels. Do other publishing houses do that according to the market climate? Or, perhaps they just cannot hire eminent romance thriller novelists, most of whom are currently writing for Deceus Publishing. Without ruling out these possibilities, I do not believe eliminating the Angelus line would be a sensible move for Deceus Publishing.
Furthermore, by telling the increasing cost of advances and royalties to authors who write romance thriller novels, the argument actually backfires. Common sense is that in most cases if those authors are very costly, their novels should be very popular. And thus the high cost of publishing romance thrill novels not only fails to support the conclusion but indeed shows the profitable potentials those novels have in the book market.
In sum, the book covers might have little to do with book sales in this case and romance thrill novels are likely to be very popular according to the increasing cost of advances and royalties to their authors. Therefore, in order to make itself more cogent, the argument should provide both the connection between book covers and book sales and the comprehensive perspective on romance thriller novels in the book market.
