Strategy question

How would you price a brand new Kindle book?

Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.

What this question tests

Pricing strategy reasoning: balancing publisher relationships, consumer price sensitivity, and platform positioning.

Clarify the book type: a bestseller from a major publisher versus a self-published or independent title, since pricing power differs significantly.
Assess the market: competing formats (physical hardcover, audiobook) and typical digital book price points readers already expect.
Identify constraints: publisher agreements often set price floors or windows (for example new releases priced near hardcover for a period), which Amazon must respect contractually.
Weigh options: price near competing formats to avoid cannibalizing physical sales versus pricing aggressively low to drive Kindle adoption and volume.
Recommend a tiered approach: higher launch price aligned with publisher agreement during the first weeks, then a data-driven price reduction based on observed demand elasticity.
Flag risk: pricing too low upsets publisher relationships and can trigger contract disputes, a real historical tension in Amazon's ebook pricing negotiations.

Names the real constraint, publisher contractual pricing terms, which is often the actual binding factor, not just what Amazon wants to charge.
References the real historical tension between Amazon and publishers over ebook pricing power as informing the recommendation.
Proposes a time-based pricing strategy, higher at launch, lower later, based on observed demand rather than a single static price.

Treating this as a pure demand-and-supply pricing exercise while ignoring publisher contract constraints.
Proposing an aggressively low price without considering the real risk of publisher pushback.

Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.