If you write down two summary stats for a Kindle category — share of recent releases, and the median review count — those numbers can look as if they belong to two different markets. On KDPTop’s public page for Kindle eBooks > Romance > Historical Romance > Regency, they belong to one list.
The category metrics are dated November 9, 2026, and they cover Amazon’s Best Sellers top 100 (sample size 100). The visible list was captured around 08:35 Asia/Shanghai on November 10. Seventy-eight percent of those titles were released in about the last 90 days. The median review count is 165. The useful question is not “which number is wrong?” It is “what is the list actually made of?”
I work on KDPTop. I have not written a Regency romance. What follows is a reading method, using this leaf as a worked example, not a field report from someone trying to sell a duke book.
Keep the number glued to its sample
A median without a date and a sample is easy to over-read. Here the sample is the Kindle Best Sellers top 100 for this node, not every book Amazon might shelve as Regency, and not the free list. The new-release share (78%) counts publication dates inside that same hundred. The median (165) is the middle review count inside that same hundred. They are allowed to coexist. A list can be mostly recent titles and still have a three-digit review median if the books on it are not doing the same job.
The free list is a different object. Its median review count on this reading is 297. Borrowing 165 to describe it would be a sample error, not a small rounding issue.
Then name the unlike books
Before treating 165 as a target, look at the visible top 10 and say what is there.
Rank 1 is Scarlett Scott’s The Duke Who Forgot Christmas (Christmas Dukes Book 3): $3.99, 67 reviews. Rank 7 is Sarah M. Eden’s Seeking Persephone (The Lancaster Family Book 1): $3.99, 13,117 reviews. Rank 10 is the next Lancaster Family book, Courting Miss Lancaster: $3.99, 6,512 reviews.
That pair is the composition check. The Christmas series installment sits well below the review median. The catalog titles sit far above it. The median is the middle of a sample that includes both.
The rest of that stretch is not a single kind of book either:
- Elizabeth Everly, The Duke’s Midnight Bride (#2): $0.99, 2,315 reviews
- Martha Barwood, A Duke for the Unseen Wallflower (#3): $0.99, 255 reviews
- Eloisa James, The Devilish Duke’s Rejected Wife (#4): $2.99, 83 reviews
- Emily Barnet, The Infamous Rake of Carlwood (#5): $0.99, 58 reviews
- Julie Cooper, The Terms of the Bequest (#6): $4.95, 265 reviews — listed as a Pride and Prejudice variation
- Mariah Stone, Duke of Enveigh (#8): $5.99, 296 reviews
- Cara Devlin, House of Peril (#9): $5.99, 607 reviews — a Bow Street Duchess Mystery, Book 8
Prices in the top 10 run from $0.99 to $5.99. Sarah M. Eden appears twice. I have not read these books, and I am not classifying plots beyond the titles and series names. This is also only the top 10 of 100, not a census.
Check the price band, not only the price median
The November 9 metrics put the median listed price at $2.99, with the middle 50% of the top 100 at $0.99 to $4.99. That is a spread. Several titles around the visible top are later series books, so $2.99 is not automatically the price of a standalone debut, and $0.99 is not automatically the price of a first book.
Date the movement if the clock is short
Ten percent of the top 100 turned over that day. KDPTop’s decision card, dated November 10, 2026, tracks this leaf for 14 days. In that window it counts 71 breakouts, 87 titles entering, and 84 dropping off. The same card estimates median daily units at about 14 — a KDPTop estimate for the median title in this sample, not an Amazon sales report, and not what Seeking Persephone or the Christmas book at #1 is doing. The verdict on the card is “go.” Two weeks can show a lot of rearrangement. It cannot tell you what the leaf looked like last spring.
KDPTop’s public page puts the opportunity score at about 44 out of 100. That is KDPTop’s own composite for indie authors, not an Amazon rank and not a forecast. The KDP share of this bestseller list is 86%, which describes how the current top 100 is published, not how a new title will perform.
A portable check
The method does not depend on Regency, and it does not depend on opening KDPTop:
- Write down the new-release share and the review median with the date and the sample.
- Open the visible top 10 and name the unlike items (seasonal series book, ninety-nine-cent title, variation, later mystery installment, catalog novel with five-figure reviews).
- Check whether the middle 50% of prices is a spread or a single pinned price.
- If the tracking history is only a couple of weeks, say so before you treat movement counts as climate.
None of that answers how many copies a book will sell. It answers what kinds of books are being averaged.
The dated figures above are from KDPTop’s public category page for Regency romance in Kindle eBooks. If you write in this lane, the narrower question is the useful one: on this list, are you trying to stand next to a Christmas series installment with 67 reviews, or next to a catalog novel with more than 13,000?
