The Publishing Playbook
Tim Gebhard and Andrey Bernhart are experienced, unconventional self-publishers who share their strategies on self-publishing, Amazon KDP, book creation, AI, and more in their podcast “The Publishing Playbook.”
The Publishing Playbook
#002 - Two Self Publishers share their unexpected TOP 5 apps for AMAZON KDP
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
PublishFlow: https://publishflow.ai/?utm_source=Podcast2
Every serious self-publisher uses at least 5 different tools every single day — but most don't even realize it. In this episode, Andrey and Tim each reveal their personal top 5 tools that power their Amazon KDP businesses — from simple apps everyone knows to cutting-edge AI that's changing the game.
If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe and leave a comment: What tool would you like us to deep-dive in a future episode?
#AmazonKDP #SelfPublishing #KDPTools #PublishFlow #BookPublishing #AITools
Welcome to the second episode to this publishing podcast that still hasn't a name. If you have any ideas, drop them below in the comments. But today you are or we are again here with me, myself, Andre. I'm a staff publisher. I made uh 123,000 US dollars in my best month of publishing. And with me is Tim Gephardt, Tim the Machine, Tim the Rocket, the man with a thousand names. Tim, welcome. Tim the technician is on board, guys.
SPEAKER_01Um yeah, maybe to maybe that's also mentioned my numbers for the intros, and we know that's catches a lot of people's attention. Uh I'm currently at I think it's about 200k lifetime royalties, 55k a month this month. In less than a year. In less than a year. That's insane. I don't want to flex though. But um yeah, okay. What is the topic today, Anna?
SPEAKER_00What's the topic today? Today we're talking about tools. I mean, you're a Tim the technician, so it's obvious that you use a lot of tools, but all of self-published self-publishing is a lot about tools. Every publisher uses at least five different things every day that's related to publishing if they're doing publishing series. It's so much about tools. Um, and you don't really realize that if you don't look at it consciously, but we today, each of us has five tools listed that we use every day or that are just really important to us and for our business.
SPEAKER_01I have to admit, it was really hard for me to like reduce it down to five tools. I have more like five tool categories, or you will see in a second. But um, yeah, I think if you're not aware of the tool landscape, there's a lot of uh information that you can take from this video. Yeah, a lot of new things, probably.
SPEAKER_00Also, my I mentioned before the interview to you, my last tool will make you laugh. You got spoilered, unfortunately. Yeah, but it's yeah, that's a good tool.
SPEAKER_01I use it every day, also. I also actually wrote it down. Um, should we go one by one? Yeah, you can start if you want it, then we can okay. So for me, right now, my essential tool, I talk to it all day, is cloud code. I've been uh since ever since OpenClaw was released, I've been inspired to build like my own OpenClaw, but it's Claude Code based, so I can actually use it with the enthropic subscription subscription, which saves me a lot of.
SPEAKER_00I think for most people it was just a lot of complicated words that they don't know what to make of. Maybe you can okay.
SPEAKER_01Um I think clawed code, you might have heard about clawed code already. Oh, let's let's start off with open claw. You've heard about open claw, it went viral. If you've not heard about open claw, I recommend you staying more up to date with AI stuff, but it's went super viral. It's like an autonomous AI agent that can solve really complex tasks, it can control your computer as well, it can uh you can message with it through Slack or through WhatsApp to Telegram. Uh essentially, it's like uh if we compare it to a normal LLM like ChatGPT, it's it cannot only output text, but it can actually do stuff. Yeah, so and Claude Code is more or less the same. It can also execute stuff, it can control stuff on your computer. Um claude code or cloud cowork, they're essentially the same, I believe. Um I don't only use it to code, I also use it to automate stuff, and I also use it like a regular LLM, also. So just like it's a GPT chat, yeah, ask questions. Basically, but um yeah, a lot of a lot of things it can do. It can, as I said, control your browser, so it can control website, it can control tools. Um, you can teach it tasks that it can do again in the future. You can connect it to your emails, it can read your emails, it can give you summaries of your emails. It's basically my tool that I'm training on the context of my life, on the context of all businesses that I'm involved in. It always knows what am I doing at the moment, uh, what is the next task for me, it prepares stuff for me, it can source, like it can complete tasks for me, like sending out emails. However, I I'm still the one sending it out, I just use it to draft emails. Um it also can do publishing-related workflows now, so I've also taught it this. Um I think it it would be worth a whole a whole uh whole video maybe or whole session going into detail what it can do. But um, yeah, that's my number one tool at the moment. And um I think also one of the most important ones.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. My first tool is is compared to that fairly simple. My first tool I wrote on is Canva. I think most publishers know Canva. It's a really simple web design app. Yeah. I think it's mainly for making advertisements and flyers. If flyers is flyers in English, like posters, stuff like that for marketing reasons. But I I create entire books with it. My my all my first 20 or 20 or even 30 books, I created all of them in Canva. I have some books that are so big that the Canva file is too big. Yeah, and Canva tells me you need to create a second Canva file. So I have the biggest book has five Canva files. Yeah, and I needed to download all of them as a PDF and then use a PDF. Um I don't know what they called, but that combines PDF documents to make these five into one big PDF that I then can upload on KDP.
SPEAKER_01I also had to had to do that one time because uh I don't know if it was, I think it was because in Canva I didn't figure out how to get the page numbers to start on a on a later page, and I had to like create one project without page numbers, then put it together because I didn't want the many numbers to start at a later part. But yeah, just this random side fact. Yeah. Um tool number two.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you're gonna.
SPEAKER_01Maybe I can also give some input to Canva and I can also continue with what I've been using for a long time instead of Canva. It's Photoshop. I think Canva and Photoshop is very, very similar. However, I've now switched to Canva as well, since I think Canva is easier to outsource or to teach people that are not tech affili-affiliated. Um yeah, in general, I think we can categorize this as my second uh tool, like image editing softwares. Yeah. Uh manual image editing softwares. I will also go later into AI image editing softwares, but um manual image editing design softwares are a big tool in my toolbox. However, they get less and less. The better AI gets, the less I use Photoshop. Also in Photoshop, they have since two years or so now, I think it was 2024 when it first released, like a generative AI feature inside Photoshop. And that has the way it changed the way I use Photoshop completely. It's I this is the most used tool for me in Photoshop since it got released. Yeah. Um, also now in Photoshop they released the Gemini access, so nano banana access inside Photoshop, which is crazy, but I will get to the AI part and the different AI models in a second.
SPEAKER_00So that was the second tool for you was the Photoshop or Canva editing something. Yeah. Photo and video editing or photo photo editing. Yeah. Um image image editing. Uh one thing you mentioned with Canva also is to have it easy to outsource, and that's how actually I use it the most. I make like Loom recordings or screen shares and make similar uh very basic Canva templates, and then record myself how I first created those templates, and then how I fill out those templates with the real content, and then give that to a freelancer who then creates the book in Canva. And what I do nowadays is I create the book myself in Publish Flow or let the freelancer create them in Publish Flow, and then they just copy at the end of the text into a Canva template that's really beautifully designed. So have the great output text from Publish Flow plus the Canva design that's very easily to design and create, more flexible, and looks it's then a visually beautiful book with a great text. So I do that combine that, and that's just the freelance. So he enters, or he or she enters everything that costs me like$20, and the entire book is perfectly formatted and publishable.
SPEAKER_01Yes, it's it's crazy. I think you mentioned their one essential tool just on the side. I don't think it's on your list, and neither it's on my list. I didn't think about it, but Loom, Loom and screen recorders is actually a great tool. We use it every day. I think I use it every day, and probably sure you use it every day also. I think that's a big essential as well.
SPEAKER_00Loom is just a screen recording software. You can you have your your image, your video of your face cam in the corner of the of the screen, and you can then screen share everything and make tutorial videos for freelancers and so on.
SPEAKER_01Just a side fact, I only don't only use it to make tutorial videos for freelancers or other humans, I also use it to record other humans. You're living in crazy times. Yeah, I use it to record processes to teach to my AI, basically, or if I have a very specific question about uh process, let's say I'm doing the taxes, I'm on the website, I don't know what to do. I either give it a screenshot, or if I have a specific problem, this thing here, right here, I don't get it. I show it on video, give it to Claude, he understands my problem, gives me the solution.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, yeah, but but my second tool, um yeah, we mentioned Loom, Loom is great, but my second tool is Notion. People don't know what Notion is. Notion is how do you explain notions so much? Um, it's like a note-taking software at its core, but you can use it for project management. We can make um you're just no notes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I would say it's project management and note-taking, yeah, combined task management.
SPEAKER_00And I have all my books, it's like a Kanban um process. So you have these um tables and you move a book, for example, book idea, then you validated it from the niche research, validation, validated, then you create a title for it, title created, you create a description for it, description created, you wrote the outline, so you can move it so you keep track of your book um creation process.
SPEAKER_01It's also how I manage my book creation process. I also have a Notion board setup. Yeah I'm just got the idea because I'm tracking my tasks currently through my Claude Code SuperTim. I also have a manual task list on my phone. Super Tim, by the way, is the is the way I call my uh cloud code system that has all the context of my life. Uh, I just had the idea. I think I need to hook it up to Notion because I'm pretty sure you can connect it to Notion directly through API. That sounds a little bit technical for non-technical people, but um I think it could get it let it visualize my task list there, and I think it would give me a much better overview.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, overall for the people Notion is just a very simple but still effective way to organize your book production and get an overview of all your books in the production process. Because if you create, for example, five books at the same time, like like I do, sometimes even more at the same time, then you need to keep track which book is at which step of production. And Notion is perfect for that. It's a little bit like keeping a Google Sheet but on steroids. Yeah, I also like it way more than Google Docs. I don't just have a Notion page, look similar to Google Docs, and have everything there and it's ordered in my Notion workspace. But we can continue with the third tool.
SPEAKER_01Um let's continue maybe with the image editing or image generation, but with AI. So previously I've been using different, I've been using all the different models. Every new model that comes out, I just try it, I find the strength and I switch between the strengths. Uh if we just go for publishing, I've been creating the covers in Ideogram. I've been editing the covers in Sora, then Nanobanana came out, I've been editing covers in nano banana. Um it's like a lot of different AI image generation tools, each has their strengths when it comes to image editing, image generation. Um but yeah, since we've worked on Publish Flow and essentially the design tools for Publish Flow, I've been just using this because it combines all my strategy into one tool. It uses the tool I would use for each part, and it uh just simplifies it down. And I also think the whole simplifying it down into one interface is much easier to teach to somebody. And I think my kind of vision at the moment, or it was previously it kind of changed, I think still think this idea is relevant. Um like simplify process down so much that the human skill involved is only the judging and the selection. Clicking, judging, and like reason like selecting the best output. And essentially, when it's boiled down to this simple process, eventually a AI that controls your browser could also do the process. You then just only have to teach your judging and reasoning skills. That's a whole different thing. It's kind of not there at the moment. Uh the whole the the the whole situation I just explained, I think is super technical. Probably a lot of you guys are just what the fuck are they talking? But um, yeah, AI image generation. I can't imagine the times how it was before AI image generation. Yeah, I was like, I was into design, video editing, etc. But I was like, it felt like I have one arm and on that arm only two fingers compared compared to now. I was able to do like a small portion of what I'm able to do now and with such a crazy speed and with such a high quality that is just like crazy essential tool for me. Image generation AI.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, especially the the visuals from Publish Flow.
SPEAKER_01Since that is access, especially that one when it comes to the whole publishing-related image generation.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, my third tool I wrote on is Publish Flow. Um, and the whole idea behind Publish Flow when I start working on it together with Roman, my my co-founder and the developer of it, is to make what you just mentioned to make it easy at one place. Because I had these travel agents creating the travel guides for my travel guide brands, and I showed them three different AI tools and made four or five Loom videos all about 20 minutes to show them exactly how to create the books with the process I want them to use. Because if they don't use it like that, the quality gets shit with AI. It's a very precise workflow that they need to follow, and they just couldn't follow it or had questions. It's just complicated to do that. And they took like two or three weeks until they can start with the creation because they have so many questions how the process works. Um, and Publishflow just combines that now into one app that can give access them to uh a title I created there and the description, they can from then on start creating the outline, feedbacking it with their expertise, write the entire book, fact-check it, proofread it, and it's finished. Yeah, so it saves like a month of work and a lot of money to pay them for all the time.
SPEAKER_01I always I always had the had the phrase Andre has heard it multiple times. Uh I try to simplify my workflows down so much that even my mom could understand it, who's not a very technical person. Um, but I think that's also what Publishflow essentially does. It guides you through step by step. I think it has the explainer video almost integrated. Yeah, like the process is so convenient, maybe that's the right word, that there are much less questions than when you teach somebody these complex multi-tool step-by-step AI processes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay, what's your your fourth one? Um video generation AI. I think the whole AI video stuff has such a big influence in general in the marketing sector. Like I see it in every ad I see. It doesn't need to be the AI avatars, it can also be like just like WO3 animated videos. VO3 is Google's image model. You might know these uh Sasquatch selfie videos. That was the hype when WO3 came out. Um yeah, whole AI video generation, big uh big essential for my marketing stuff that I'm working on.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, my fourth tool is also an AI. Um it's Gemini. Gemini is my everyday AI that I ask for for any questions, uh, do basic research with it. It's just instead of most people use ChatGPT as their main model, and I abandoned that I think over a year ago and switched to to Gemini. I mainly use Gemini, the thinking mode, the the deep research mode and the normal pro mode. It's the best basic AI in my mind.
SPEAKER_01I also think for the especially for the deep research stuff, uh I also still like Gemini the most because I always think Google has is like the most spread search engine has to be the best deep research engine. Um, yeah, maybe as my last tool, it is actually deep research. I think deep research is not the direct tool, it's a like tool in a tool for multiple tools. But since deep research came out, it feels like no problem is unsolvable.
SPEAKER_00I think maybe for the people what deep research is, is like a mode of an AI. If you use an AI like KGPT, you can select deep research, and the AI will then go out and research the internet and will just feedback with it with itself and give you a a big report of what it researched. That's just yeah.
SPEAKER_01And um it's getting a little bit technical again, but ever since deep research came out, like the there are some benchmark tests for AI models. And when deep research came out, the like academic level of academic works had a big jump because it just goes off for 20 minutes, looks at 400 websites, gets a full image of the problem you're trying to solve or the topic you're doing in deep research on. And it just the quality of output is like it's an expert on the topic in 20 minutes, it is an expert up on the topic, and uh also like tags situations, law situations, it's able to give really good uh insights and feedback on even if it's like super niche, it will find something somewhere on the internet compared to some other thing that is that it has found, and it I think it's safe to say that it almost always comes out with a truth. I think it's always comes out with a truth. Still, somebody might still be fine, be able to find like uh maybe inconsistencies or whatever, but um yeah, deep research just brought a lot to my problem-solving skills, yeah. It improved it a lot, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay, my last tool um maybe sounds weird to some people, but it's WhatsApp and and not for communication purposes. Of course, I use WhatsApp all day for writing, but why I love WhatsApp is I um I started using it mainly for um send documents or text from my phone to my desktop or my laptop. So I created a group with myself on WhatsApp where I send um everything that I want to have on my laptop via my phone, or vice versa, the other way around. And then it's it's so convenient, yeah, and also all the um all the Texts I write, the descriptions for my book, if it's some kind of sales copy, I I always write it in WhatsApp and save it there. I just love the interface of WhatsApp, and I can write better texts for some reasons in WhatsApp, even though it's not at all optimized for that. But I'm so used to WhatsApp and I just love it. And now you love that.
SPEAKER_01I've never understood it because you can only like see a small part of the text you write.
SPEAKER_00But um I always send Tim uh scripts and texts in WhatsApp that are five times as long as the entire chat, and he's always says, Why don't you do that in the Google Docs and then send me the docs? Why do you send me the chat?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. But everybody their own each each down. Um, but the fact with the file sharing in WhatsApp, not only between yourself, I also have a group with myself and also save passwords in WhatsApp. I don't know if that's the smartest thing, but I don't know if that's the smartest thing to share publicly. Uh no, never mind. But I've lost access to my old WhatsApp number, and that was a little bit headache because I had so much files and passwords stored there. But it's end-to-end decrypted, encrypted. I think it's pretty safe. I think it's at least safer than saving it in a Google Drive uh document. Um but yeah, the file sharing I completely did not remember when I read your WhatsApp on the list. But yeah, it's I'm sharing files with you, I'm sharing files with designers, I'm I'm primarily using WhatsApp, except for content files that are too large for WhatsApp. I think they have an upload limit of like 64 megabytes or something. I don't know. Okay, I think for SIPs it's different. I don't know. When I try to share videos, sometimes it says oh video uh video's maximum file limit is uh 64 megabytes, I believe. I'm not sure. But yeah, WhatsApp ultra essential. Yeah, no, I think it's mostly us Europeans. Or I think since Meta bought WhatsApp, it's also the US.
SPEAKER_00But uh in Europe, I think everybody uses WhatsApp, no, except the Swedes. But every everybody in Germany and Austria at least, yeah. I think 98% of all people alive use WhatsApp. Maybe that's exaggerated, but everybody uses it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think in India it's also big. I think China has their own. US now also is using WhatsApp. Uh I think business-wise, the US people still use iMessage, I believe. Everybody has an iPhone, but um WhatsApp has also gotten really big since MetaBoard, pretty sure.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Okay. I think it was a great video. Um, if the people who are watching or listening interested in Publish Flow, we will launch in about a week when you see this podcast. So you can click on the link and register for the webinar. It will be a really nice and interesting launch webinar with a big founding member deal. So make sure to um be live at the at the webinar in the webinar.
SPEAKER_01I think exciting times we live in. So many tools are out there, but I think tools are getting less and less because more tools come up that combine everything into smaller tools. And I think what we did with Publish Flow is like basing the feedback is people are mind-blown what it what it can do and what it the amount of time it saves. Maybe for the YouTube comments, um any tool you've heard now that you would be more interested in seeing how we use that tool. Um, I know that Canva is always big. Probably a lot of guys want to see Canva videos with girls, of course. Um I think that would be interesting. But yeah, let us know.
SPEAKER_00And if also if you have a name suggestion for us, because we still don't have a name. I hope we have a name when we launch the podcast, so we already maybe have one if you see that. But now when we film this, we don't have a name. So you can also post successions there if we don't already found one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we at least have to give it a channel name. And that's true. Maybe we just do placeholder podcasts. No, then let's see.
SPEAKER_00Uh we will find a solution. Yeah, 100%. Okay, thanks for watching.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for being here, Tim. And until next time. We're doing this together. You're not having me. Yeah, we're having each other. Uh see you next time, guys.