What Is Kindle Direct Publishing Price Support Beta?

Updated December 29, 2020 Derek Haines 6864 Views

Amazon has a service for authors using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) called KDP Price Support Beta.

The best way to describe this service is by quoting from the KDP Help section.

Price Elasticity Model

KDP Price Support Beta is based on a price elasticity model that is derived from past customer purchase data. A price elasticity model is a statistical model that measures how price changes affects demand.
The data shows that customer reaction to price changes is often similar for books with similar values for attributes like category, customer reviews and ratings, author’s past sales, best seller rank and page count. As the price elasticity model evolves over time, you may see some of the attributes replaced, removed, added, or weighted differently.

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Access Price Support

There’s not much to it

Can I get anything other than $2.99?

Summary

Access Price Support

To access this new service, select a book from your bookshelf, and then click on Rights & Pricing.

Then click on the View Service button.

There’s not much to it

While it sounds wonderful and should be helpful in understanding how to price e-books in relation to similar books, my experience has left me quite, well, undewhelmed for want of a better word.

I looked at a number of my own titles that ranged from $0.99 up to $6.99.

The first book I tried I had listed for $0.99. Here is the Pricing Support recommendation. $2.99.

I then tried a short novella of 20k words listed at $1.99. The recommendation, $2.99.

Now for a book of 80K words currently priced at $2.99. The recommendation, again, $2.99.

Now for a full-length novel priced at $3.99. The recommendation, $2.99.

At least there was something different here in that KDP Pricing Support suggested as this was the first book in a series that I should choose a lower price.

Can I get anything other than $2.99?

Of course, I was getting very curious now to see if there was any other recommended price other than $2.99.

So I tried a book I had priced at $4.99. Yet again the recommended price was $2.99.

I had one last try with a book of around 200k words, which has a listed price of $6.99.

Why wasn’t I surprised at the recommendation? Again, $2.99.

Summary

Well, after all this, I was left wondering exactly what this KDP Price Elasticity Model is.

From my testing of it, I would hardly think it has any elasticity in it at all.

For all of the algorithms using similar values for attributes like category, customer reviews and ratings, author’s past sales, best seller rank, and page count, all it can return is the same repetitive graph and the same price of $2.99, over and over again.

Sadly, it looks like yet another case of Amazon’s attitude in sharing any data at all with KDP authors.

If you want to waste some time, you can try this service with your own books and see if you receive a price recommendation of anything other than $2.99.