Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) offers authors plenty of resources to format, publish and price their books. The latest author service that has been added to KDP includes a Pricing Support feature, which determines the best prices for your books based on the concept of price elasticity.
Price elasticity refers to the rise or fall of customer demand when the price of a product changes. For example, when a book normally priced at $9.99 is temporarily on sale for $0.99, 10 times as many people are likely to purchase it when the book is at this lower price. Conversely when a book’s price goes up, customer demand falls. KDP Pricing Support is designed to scan several types of data, including customer reviews, ratings, past sales, and more in order to find the price that will earn you the most royalties.
Opting In to Pricing Support
It’s important to note that the KDP Pricing Support feature will not automatically change the price of your book on Amazon based on its suggestions. The data simply provides an extra statistic for authors to consider when pricing their books, and authors can then choose where to set their prices. Since the Pricing Support tool is currently in its beta version, authors will have to edit their settings to access the tool:
- Log in to your KDP account and click “Bookshelf.”
- Select one of your books, then click on the “Rights & Pricing” link.
- Locate the section that reads “Set Your Pricing and Royalty,” and then select “View Service” to opt in to the Pricing Support feature.
Benefits of KDP Pricing Support
KDP Pricing Support can help authors gain a comprehensive view of sales trends, customer demands, and more. This data can help you:
- Find the optimal price for your book.
- Increase sales.
- Attract new readers and followers.
- Boost number of reviews.
Drawbacks of KDP Pricing Support
Currently, the one major drawback with KDP Pricing Support is that it’s still in its beta version. Amazon states that the feature will evolve and improve over time, but for now, there seems to be a few glitches in the system:
- First, the Pricing Support tool almost always suggests setting the price of a book to $2.99, which has left authors wondering if the algorithm is actually working properly.
- Secondly, if the feature suggests that you to increase the price of your book, your total sales will most likely drop. You will have to ask yourself if setting the price higher to gain revenue is more important than building up your platform before upping the cost.
