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
#003 - KDP Q&A: Amazon Ads, AI Books & the $1M Month Goal with Amazon KDP
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In this episode of the Publishing Playbook, Andrey Bernhart ($500K+ on Amazon KDP) and Tim Gebhard ($250K in 9 months) sit down for a listener Q&A. We answer your most asked questions about self-publishing, Amazon KDP, AI-powered book creation, PublishFlow, and what it really takes to scale.
Topics covered:
- Why Andrey gives away his publishing workflow through PublishFlow instead of gatekeeping it
- How public accountability on YouTube drives Tim's performance
- The impact of being around other successful publishers
- Andrey's top 5 books out of 50 (and why)
- How design skills give you an unfair advantage in KDP
- PublishFlow's biggest weakness right now (and the long-term vision)
- Is AI ruining book publishing? Our honest take on fiction vs. non-fiction
- Tim's aggressive Amazon Ads strategy explained
- When KDP started feeling like a real business for Andrey
About us:
Andrey Bernhardt — Self-publisher for 2 years, $500K+ lifetime royalties on Amazon KDP, co-founder of PublishFlow (publishflow.ai)
Tim Gebhardt — Publishing since May 2025, ~$200K lifetime royalties in 9 months, documenting the journey on Peter Holmquist's channel
Try PublishFlow: https://publishflow.ai/?utm_source=PodEP3
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## Timestamps
0:00 — Cold open teaser
0:32 — Welcome & what's this episode about (Q&A format)
1:15 — Who are we? Introductions
2:02 — Why does Andrey give away his workflow through PublishFlow?
3:10 — The vision: raising the quality bar on Amazon KDP with AI
7:00 — Will the public perception of AI books change?
8:05 — Does documenting the journey on YouTube pressure Tim to perform?
9:27 — Tim's goal: $100K month by end of March, $1M month by Q4
10:46 — Has being around successful publishers changed how you think?
12:30 — Two brains are better than one — how collaboration sparks ideas
14:25 — Tim's SuperTIM AI agent origin story (brain dump in the car)
15:11 — If you could only keep 5 of your 50 books, which ones and why?
17:30 — The $19.40 royalty book & the $33K seasonal monster
18:57 — How did design & Photoshop skills help Tim start with KDP?
20:30 — Design skills > writing skills in the AI era?
22:31 — What's PublishFlow's biggest weakness right now?
24:00 — The long-term vision: InDesign-level quality inside PublishFlow
25:45 — Is AI ruining book publishing? Fiction vs. non-fiction debate
28:35 — Could AI write the next Game of Thrones?
30:00 — The future: custom AI-generated novel series made just for you
30:53 — Tim's aggressive Amazon Ads strategy — why spend so much?
33:00 — Andrey's defensive ad strategy vs. Tim's aggressive approach
35:47 — When did KDP start feeling like a main hustle? (Andrey's growth curve)
38:30 — Tim's insane growth curve: $150 → $55K months
40:15 — What's "normal" on KDP? We want to have that real conversation
41:06 — PublishFlow launch announcement
43:30 — Drop "SuperTim" in the comments if you watched until here!
44:24 — Outro
I could only use it for myself and scale my business, but I think it's as more leverage also for my own as the public though as a business can scale really high.
SPEAKER_01But on what I just explained, I think people will be looking forward to learning from AI. So people that might like the customers might actually want to rather read a book by an AI than maybe.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, more insights about Amazon KDP, about publishing, and about us. And about us, of course, if there are personal questions, then we also are, yes, we'll talk about that. But who am we if you've never watched or heard the podcast before? My name is Andre Bernhard. I'm a self-publisher for two years now. I earned over half a million on Amazon KDP in these two years. And yeah, next to me is Tim Gebhardt.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I'm Tim. I'm I have been publishing since 2025 in May. That's like nine to ten months now. Uh lifetime royalties, I'm currently at like 200k, around 200k. It's probably a little bit more. It has been a while since I checked now. Um in nine months. Yeah, in nine months. I think these are good results. However, uh, we're gonna go a little bit more into my philosophy uh about scaling in this uh in this episode. Um I think I would kick it off with a question to you, Andre. Yeah. Um so I know all of you guys probably know a lot of publishers, they're like like gatekeeping, especially niches, is super big in publishing. Nobody wants to give away their titles. Um when it comes to your software publish flow, essentially you are giving away your workflow to create high quality books with uh AI and different tools. Why do you just uh give it away like that to people? Like you could theoretically use that knowledge, gatekeep it by yourself, and translate it to masses of books with like high quality and super high revenue. What's your philosophy behind behind that decision?
SPEAKER_00Perfect. The first question is about published flows, and now everybody thinks we we do a marketing podcast. No, but a lot of questions were about publish flows, and we are of course so happy to ask them, but it will also be um different other more general questions. Um but it's a good question. I asked that myself often because of course it's a competitive advantage, um, but I just see more leverage in providing it to a lot of people. Yeah, I had Peter in an interview, uh, maybe that video is already on and on my YouTube channel, and he answered the question similarly why he started with YouTube and with different publishers elite, his community, where he also helps other publishers and teaches them, um, and has these big life events all over the world. And his explanation was perfect. He said, as a publisher, you can only serve X amount of people. But if you as a publisher help a thousand or only a hundred or only ten other publishers to serve their customers, so the readers, then you as one publisher through these ten or one hundred publishers have more impact on the entire market. And if you look at it on a an influence perspective, so what you want to achieve in life or what you want to offer to the world as an act of service, for example, that's a mentality that works, how to you as one person influence the most people. But also if you look at it from a business perspective, if you have a bigger effect on more people, I think long term you will earn more money also. Because if you are the reason that a thousand publishers act like that, and thanks to these thousand publishers, 10 million people get better books overall. You were the starting point for that chain reaction to occur. And the the wish we may publisher is that the entire quality of the KDP market gets higher. Because I think for my publishing business, it's also better when the landscape of KDP has better books, because most of my books are at least supported with AI. Now most of them are completely written with AI, but in the beginning it was more just like supporting, and people still have something against AI books. And if we launch Publish Flow and change the landscape that all AI books have a really high quality, we can transform the market in a way that people try to understand that AI doesn't mean bad quality. And that's in the way the vision. If we have 500 users at pub in Publish Flow, then these 500 publishers will maybe on average launch one book a month. That's 500 new books a month on Amazon over a year. These are 6,000 new books written with Publish Flow and published in Amazon KDP that will increase the average of book quality on the market. And that's I think the reason. But it's a good question because it's of course, I could only use it for myself and and scale my business, but I think it's it has more leverage also for my own. I think Publish Flow as a business can scale really high, but also on what I just explained.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Very much looking forward on the impact in the next couple of years that this software will have on the on the whole KDP market. I think uh exciting times, exciting times ahead. Also, I think there's always the argument if you don't do if you don't do it, somebody else would probably do it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Maybe in a shittier quality. Yeah. And uh and then the iBooks again have a bad reputation with with fuck my business up. Yeah because I create the iBooks, even though there are high-quality iBooks, people just say a iBook is a iBook, so a iBook is bad quality, and that's an issue.
SPEAKER_01Very much looking forward to the development there. Also, just maybe as a last point to that, I think at some point in the future, when AI gets smarter than humans and the public image of it will in general change, not only when it comes to book publishing, I think people will be looking forward to learning from AI. So people might like the customers might actually want to rather read the book by an AI than uh than by humans. I think we are making a good step there already.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, long term definitely, but maybe that it takes another five plus years, maybe. A couple of years. Yeah, definitely. Okay, a question I have for you, Tim. I would have done on my phone. Um, you document you're documenting your journey on Peter's YouTube channel. It's on Peter's home Chris Reef and Publishers channel. You make once a month a video updating your numbers, sharing what you how much you spend, how much books you created, how much you earn, stuff like that. And the question I wrote down is if that pressures you to perform, or if you don't really feel that.
SPEAKER_01It definitely pressures me to perform, but that was the whole point of the butt. That was one of the points of documenting the journey. Some of you might be following the journey. We started month one, uh, like from the first book launch. We started documenting everything, monthly updates. Um, and in the first episode, I said the goal is to become the craziest KDP case study that YouTube has ever seen. And I think we are on a good way of on a good road of achieving that. Um we initially uh named it the one uh the zero to 10k journey, then after I think three months, the 10k were hit, or four months or so. Um, we started uh we decided to call it the zero to one hundredk month per month journey. I think I can hit the 100k maybe at the end of March. Um looking forward to those results. But I continuously set new goals. Like I like the pressure, I like the public accountability, it makes me perform better than if I would have no accountability at all. Um yeah, I said my uh maybe some of you know the know the episodes. Uh I set the goal for this year, Q4. I want the one million month and the two million, two million year. I think it's doable. Let's see what this year brings. Um, but yeah, this is uh the chosen path. Like, and I can recommend it to everybody. You don't have to do the public accountability stuff, but also just in smaller groups with your friends, like set goals, share your goals, tell your friends to hold you accountable about the goals, um, whether it's weekly goals, yearly goals. Um I think it's really good to have that outside eye like um holding you accountable. I think it's for the personal development as well as the like a business development. I think that's just beneficial.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And even if you hit half of the goals you said, yeah, it's one of the most incredible case studies in KDP history, I think. It's completely insane. Um okay. Uh maybe a question for both of us. Um has being around other successful publishers changed how you think about your business?
SPEAKER_01Um I think I can maybe kick it off with that. So I don't have the perspective of not being around other successful publishers, but for me, I think my results, they would have been it is not even in reach. I think not even in vision. I would not even know that this is possible without having this community access, without having a network of people I can ask questions or I can basically copy. I have told this, I think, in the Las Vegas speech also. All I ever did was just copying success successful people, whether it's in audio engineering, video editing. I just I think one valuable skill that I think I have is, for example, on YouTube, I can like see who's talking bullshit and who is really who I should listen to, like who I can copy, and I think that's plays a big role in in my success on KDP that I just copy what other people have done. Of course, I bring also a different my own skill set to the table, which I think comes in very handy in almost every aspect of self-publishing. But um for me, the whole watching other successful publishers is like the foundation of my KDP success.
SPEAKER_00For me, I I just love to communicate with with other people and to get to know how they did it, what their processes look like, share my processes because in in my experience, if I share what I do and reframe it and need to explain it to another person, it helps me understand better what I'm doing and to optimize my own processes. And that's why I was so active, for example, in in Peter's school community before we two met each other. It was just it's a free school for self-publishers, and I was just commenting under every poster, rode with people in the comments, but also in the private chat of school, and that was just something I learned a lot from. And now, I mean, we we traveled to Sweden for six weeks to work together with Peter. Now we moved to Cyprus and live in Cyprus to be around um other successful publishers, and that of course changed everything. I mean, I think you can't really figure out what would be another alternative life without this impact because it would just be so different.
SPEAKER_01I think there's also something magical when two brains come together that are basically Andre's thinking about publishing the whole day, I think about publishing the whole day. But when two brains come together, there's like new ideas coming up because Andre tells me something, I look at it from a different angle, I get an idea. Andre gets an idea on top of the idea, and it's just iterating on ideas, and it's just uh amazing things can develop if just to conversation. If you I think in every aspect, not only publishing, in every part of life, also uh just communication brings new ideas and invention. But it's also when you talk with AI, like I sometimes talk with AI like it's a friend, and uh I I I've told the story also, I think it was in the Peter video. Um one time I just I was in the car with my girlfriend and I was super super overwhelmed, stressed a little bit, and I just like brain dumped on my girlfriend, recorded the whole thing on my phone, gave it to an AI to like give me suggestions on how to solve the situation, and that brought me to like another incredible idea to build like my personal agent, or that basically brought me to the idea on how to structure my personal agent, AI agent. In the last episode, we we talked about our favorite tools.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you mentioned Super Tim there. Yeah, that was the that was the origin story of Super Tim. Okay, do you have another question? Yeah, let me look real quick.
SPEAKER_01Um okay, I think that question is an interesting one. So you have around 50 books now, I believe. Yeah, if you would have to keep only five of those 50 books, what would it be? Or you don't have to, of course, say the titles, but um tell me why those five favorite books are your five favorite books.
SPEAKER_00Um one of them is is really long, for example. Um it has hundreds of pages, it's by far the thickest book in the niche. Um, and in my on my YouTube channel, I often share the concepts of the points of attack. If you want to compete in one niche, you need to find points of attack to enter this niche and be able to compete against the other books in this niche. And one point of attack is length, so how in-depth you can talk about a topic. And this book is just if you have the if you want the book in this niche and you get this book, the book solves everything there is to learn in this niche. And with the other books, you maybe need to buy three books. And that's why this book can be priced three times the price of a normal book. Yeah, so my royalties per sale on that book is$19.40 something cents, I think. That is insane. That gives you a lot of like headroom for uh for Amazon ads, for Facebook ads, everything I do, it's just so much easier because this book has so much so high royalties. Yeah, so that I would definitely keep that. And I have a lot in my brand, um, so they all work who intervene in each other and benefit from each other. Um, I have one seasonal book that did over 33. I think it did 33,000 US dollars in um last year in its best month. And that one I would definitely keep because I think this year it now has a lot of reviews. I think over 100 actually. I'm not sure. Haven't checked it since it's seasonal for the last few few months, but it got a lot or mainly five-star reviews, maybe a few, four star, but it has a great ratings. And for seasonal book, getting great ratings is so powerful because the next season will just will most likely be substantially higher than the first season of it. That was the first season for it.
SPEAKER_01I remember that book uh taking off when we watched it like day by day crawling. I remember that it was exciting.
SPEAKER_00It's it's crazy. Yeah, and the I guess the other books. Um one would be, I think, the first travel guides we created, just because that's um was the first one of that brand, was the starting point, and it was also the um inspiration to later on build my i workflow to create travel guides or every book faster. It was also the first collaborative book with with yes, exactly. I created it with Jonas. Um, we published it on his KDP account, have a 50-50 split on it. Uh, and it was the first corporation, I have multiple corporations now. Collaborations, corporations, collaborations. I think it's collaborations, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think both work and yes.
SPEAKER_00Okay, you have multiple collaborations, and it's just nice to work together with other publishers. Um, because you have just efficiency boosters if you do that.
SPEAKER_01Everybody is strong in their own field, everybody can focus on what they're good at.
SPEAKER_00It's like you said with the two brains, if the two brains, yeah. I only talk about three books now, but I think people got the point. I think they got the point.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Okay, give me another question.
SPEAKER_00Yes, um, for Tim. I think that's interesting for the people. How did having a background in designing and Photoshop help you to start with KDP?
SPEAKER_01I think the skill set I prawed into the game with like the design knowledge, Photoshop knowledge, AI image generation knowledge. Um for let's say for everything except high-content books, there's pretty much everything you need for medium content books. I came in to the game with I started with short stories, which were super design heavy, but I had a writer for that and which followed my AI writing process. But um I think I came in with a super high quality for short story books that the competition was just lacking. There was also like the the first spark that that that made me go want to do children's short story books was that I saw other competitive books that were performing insane, and I thought I can do so much better when it comes to design. And um I think it's super handy when it comes to covers. I think covers is the most important thing when you want to sell a book, cover and title, but I still think cover is still stronger. Um so cover design was super practical. Interior design, I think now with social media also, um like the interior design that the book looks pretty gets more and more important. Um, yeah, I think like design is nowadays maybe even more important than writing, because writing like good design skills are more important than writing skills, because your writing skills they can get easily boosted by AI. Design skills also still, I think if you can operate Photoshop or InDesign, you still have a big uh a big advantage, even if you outsource it, just knowing the processes, knowing what's possible, knowing how to do stuff most efficiently is uh comes in super handy. Also, when it's about outsourcing design stuff, I pay much less than people who don't have the design skills because I just give them my workflows, I know what time it takes, I know what time it takes when somebody is super unefficient, I know what time it takes when somebody is working super efficient, I show them the most efficient way, at least what I believe is the most efficient way, and uh so I also save costs in that regard, even if I don't do it directly myself. But uh yeah, as I explained.
SPEAKER_00I think that's a a great transition, actually, uh, because the the only thing I need to do now for the travel guide brand I talked about is to pay the designer because the Um the the writing is now done by Publishflow entirely. Of course, um a travel agent uses Publishflow to write it, but I also need to pay him. But he writes that in like a week or maybe two if it's really detailed. And that's it instead of three to six months or nine months was the longest. Um but I still need to export the book and then design it or send it to a designer. That's the that's one question we got. Uh, what's it exactly? What's the biggest weakness of Publishflow right now? And what are you working on fixing? And the biggest weakness right now is that things like a complex, a complex travel guide like we do, it has over 300 images, a lot of colors, and the it has a really high quality design. And to create that, it's really expensive to do that. And Publish Flow can't do that. And the long-term vision would be to be able to have like a high-end in-design level of interior design quality inside Publish Flow, but really easy to do, so without having the design skills. That's the long-term vision, what we also work on. Um, but that's that's hard to do and will take a long time. But that's the the end version because that would save me around a thousand to one and a half thousand dollars per travel guide if we fix that problem. We fix the text issue and the the quality issue of the text that's completely resolved with publish flow, but the designing, we still need to export the text, give it to a designer, and and so on. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01In your current uh, maybe just a follow-up question in your current travel book uh like workflow chain, freelancer chain, do you pay the design freelancer? Is it the same freelancer? First question, is it the same freelancer every time? Yeah, second question: are the book layouts the same every time?
SPEAKER_00No, no, it's the same designer, but the layout changes, or it doesn't change directly. It depends on the book. There's some books have completely different layouts. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Um yeah. And the final follow-up question to that, do you pay the same price every time, or is it cheaper the next time because he can like use the first book as a template kind of design template?
SPEAKER_00And what you mean? Um we normally pay the same still. Okay, but we we work with her long term, she gets every book that we create, she does, so we have like a fixed clear deal on that. And we're happy to pay that because she has great quality, but it's still the most cost of the travel guide is by far first. It was the tax creation because the expert wrote it, and now the tax creation, as I said, is really cheap for us, but the designing is still a thousand plus.
SPEAKER_01Okay, interesting. I'm thinking though, that the sooner or later the design layer will also be absorbable for AI tools.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we're we're working on that in long term. Maybe it takes a year, maybe longer, maybe faster. We can't really say that. But the end vision of the formatting tool that's already inside Publish Flow would be a formatting tool that's able to have in-Design level quality. That's would be such a game changer.
SPEAKER_01But I already have kind of a vision for that. So keep you guys updated on that. Maybe that can be the solution to them to the problem. Um maybe a follow-up question to to both of us. A lot of people, especially I I think in fiction publishing, they have that stance. Yeah. Is that AI is ruining book publishing, or is we already kind of talked about this a little bit, also in other episodes, but they claim AI is ruining book publishing. Um like the soul is getting lost and the quality depletes. What is your opinion of that?
SPEAKER_00Um, in fiction, it's hard. I don't publish fli fiction. Um, I would love to one day write a fiction book because I read a lot of fiction. I read way more fiction books than non-fiction books, but I publish non-fiction books. Um and I've never I think I've I think I've never read an I-written fiction book. And I I can see that working, but it's yeah, I think it's it's doable currently with the correct workflow, but it still needs so much input from the from the author. Yeah, um, but I'm thinking of, for example, a book like uh uh Song of Ice and Fire, if that can be created by I maybe it can, but not only with the eye, but the the author needs to really focus, give give it his give everything to it, yeah. And still it's really hard then because that's one of the best book series ever written. But long term, of course, it will reach the point, and at the moment, what the eye doesn't in the at the moment for fiction is just speeding up the process and filling in the gaps, and he can then keep rewriting it. So I think if you only if an author only uses it as a tool to speed up his writing, he doesn't lose quality at all. He can just you yeah, you use it as a tool. Yeah, just as for example, Google Docs is uh a nicer way to write the book than I don't know a hundred years ago on a normal what's it called typewriter. Yeah, yeah. So it's just an evolution, another tool. But for for nonfiction books, with Publish Flow especially, you can based on the because non-fiction books work differently. One fiction books are always about the value for the reader, they need to learn something, they need to get knowledge needs to be transferred to them, and that's way easier to systematize and build a workflow around that's predictably good. And that's the issue with fiction. You maybe can have one AI fiction book that's insane good because the author gave it the right ideas and got lucky with the I uh thing that got generated, yeah. But it's not you can't really um repeat that. Yeah, and with non-fiction, you can build a process, and that's what we did that's consistently produces good text.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I also think there's a big difference between uh quality when it comes to AI productions for non-fiction, where it's like I would even say end-level quality and fiction where you still want the I mean you also want the human touch in the non-fiction, but fiction is a it's a completely different game. I just had the uh had the vision in mind maybe if you put like an AI in the thinking box for one year to to like write and reiterate on a series like what is it, Song of Ice and Fire? Song of Ice and Fire, yeah. Song of Ice and Fire, and he just uh sits there for one year and just like imagines stuff, remarkes stuff, picks an idea, like crosses out an idea.
SPEAKER_00I think eventually I don't think an eye on its own could do it even if it's AI is quite advanced to be honest, so it could already be at that point if the workflow is good enough. It's a hard topic.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's exciting things to come both though.
SPEAKER_00I think there will sooner or later be like one purely AI author who writes crazy good fiction books, and everybody I mean if you go into the future, like in 20 years, and you just tell maybe an app or on a website, I want a book about that topic, and the website will with an AI create an entire book series with seven books about that topic, print it like Amazon KDP and send it to you. And then you have your own novel that only you read based on what you told them, and that's something that we are heading to. I mean that's as I said, it's maybe 20 years in the future, yeah, maybe 10 years in the future if it comes soon, but it's AI is getting better and better. But now we are in the present, and now we can use the tools we have to make the most out of it now. But it's an interesting future we're heading to.
SPEAKER_01I think not only in publishing, there's like that will uh it will just be mind-blowing. Do you have another question for me?
SPEAKER_00Yes, let me check. Okay, I um one is uh I saw in your last interview how much you spend on Amazon ads. Why do you do this? And do you really think this is necessary to see succeed on KDP nowadays?
SPEAKER_01People in the YouTube comments they they love to just hate on hate on the hate on my Amazon ads standing and my profit ratio.
SPEAKER_00But um I read uh sorry to interrupt, but I read one comment that just wrote this man, he has so big what does they think? Kohannas, cohortness.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I can I can see that there's uh like the risk factor is not like unaffecting, like it's still it's very much affecting me spending so much money and getting the money two months later, and uh Amazon being my my having the hand over me. There is some unwell feeling to it. It really needs some cojones, I think, without praising myself. Um but I think as you guys know, I've or as you guys who watch the series with Peter know, uh I have Gerald managing my ads. He is big on like super heavy ad-spent launches, and so far it has worked out every time that we've tried it, and um it's just a super crazy approach to scaling the KDP business fast. Um, do I think it's necessary? I think in no way it's necessary. I think Andre is the perfect case study that a just organic launch with uh no crazy overspending is also a very good approach to uh go with. Um you can also scale with that. You can probably not scale this fast, but it also depends on what type of books like how big the success of each individual book is. Uh I'm sure there are also people who scale super fast with a non-super aggressive uh ad strategy. But yeah, it's all calculated and I think in the looking at it long term, like on let's say on a five-year time frame, ten-year time frame, in the end the net profit will be higher with this scaling approach than with the organic. How much higher? I cannot really say. But um yeah, it's it's scary, but I think it's worth the risk and it's so it's working so far. I cannot say that I regret it or anything.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, my strategy is is quite defensive on ads. So I normally are maybe break even a little bit in the red in the first month, which I think is normal nowadays on KDP. If you make a thousand, you also spend a thousand in the first month of your launch. That's that's okay. But from the second month starting, I'm normally at least 50% is net profit. Okay. Of and then I try to to get to or 50% is is not net profits, but ROI is 50%. And then maybe my goal is to get at least to like 80% ROI. So if I spend a hundred, I want 180 back, and that's what I get maybe in the third month. That's what I aim for. And your approach is going into the red like insane for the first month. It's just different, different.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, however, overall I'm I'm not in the red every month, but and one thing you also have to consider is I'm continuously launching new books. Except last month I only launched one book. The reason for that is that this book was a huge success and it ate up so much ad spent to like get it to rank where it has its maximum potential. Um, that I had no ad spend left to launch other books.
SPEAKER_00But it has a three-digit BSR, which is completely crazy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um, so yeah, the continuous launching also eats up the net profit of the month. But looking at it long term, I think if I would stop launching books now and I would just optimize the ads for profit, I would have already a way higher net than if I wouldn't have uh done all this all this uh aggressive ad launches. Um okay Andre, another question to you. So you already told us in the intro you've made over 500k now on KDP. Um at what point did it feel start feeling like a like a main hustle instead of a side hustle, or did it ever feel to you like a side hustle?
SPEAKER_00Or not really. I uh did it from the beginning full-time. Um but it really felt there were like two two points which changed and got more serious. One point was when I made$1,700, I made around a thousand in net profit, and it was month six or month seven of my KDP journey, and that was this first time I thought, okay, this can work, this really can become my main income and my yeah, the thing I do all day, in a way, what I'm doing now. Um, and then it was only a few months later I scaled quite fast. I think four months later, it was October, I hit the first 10k in one month. And I don't know how much profits, I don't want to to lie, but I think it was around 4,000 something um euros. But yeah, and that's that was a time when I knew that it's uh it's the right thing.
SPEAKER_01I remember when I first saw your overall curve on the in the Barcelona presentation, and it's also very like you started slow for the first couple of months, but then it just started doubling, doubling, doubling.
SPEAKER_00And it's literally doubling every month in the beginning. It was$44, 150. That was triple, but yeah, 150. Then it was um 250, exactly 250, yeah, 500, 1080, yeah, but that 180 we only were like 83 dollars in profit, so it was all spent, and then the change was to 1000 to 1700. That was what I just explained, then it was three thousand, five, eight and a half, and ten. I think that was the so it's really perfect like you have it in um a school book when you want to show something, it's really the perfect case study in constant growing. Then of course it peaked in the first December with 19k, and then it fell down to 15k. Yeah, I'm thinking how my curve was.
SPEAKER_01I think it was like I think your curve will be the weirdest curve in KDP history. It was 150 or something the first month, then like 400 or something. Okay, I think then it went up. I don't know, at some point there were just crazy jumps. I think it went up, and I don't quite remember. I think maybe 1.5 or something, then it was 6k, then it was 18k, I believe. Oh no, there was a 13k step in between 13k, 18k, 55k. There was like the crazy Q4 jump. Um, and now I had been at 55k also in February, and I'm very much looking forward to the Marshalls now. Um, but yeah, I think the curve is uh will be very unique, I guess.
SPEAKER_00So and it's it's it are it's crazy amounts of of numbers we're talking about. We will also make a I have a planned uh list of podcast topics for us, and one is to talk about the real numbers people doing on KDP, because your case study is one of the most uniquest in in KDP history. My case studies is also very unique. I want to have a down-to-earth real conversation about what's normal on KDP, what most people reach. Because if people only hear these crazy numbers, think they get detached from sounds maybe dumb, but detached from reality a little bit because it is possible that we show that it's possible, but it's unique, we have special circumstances, it's also luck, of course. So it's not yeah, it's not really predictable what we did. Yeah, a lot of things needed to be in place to have these results, and that's not something normal.
SPEAKER_01Okay, um, I have to admit it feels a little bit like playing a video game still. I was big on video gaming, and uh my KDP training also feels kind of like a video game. It's also when I started KDP, one aspect was that it's basically like a single-player PvP game, and I like the competitive aspect of it, and I uh yeah, it kind of feels just like playing a video game. Also, the numbers, since I'm not aiming prof for profit, I don't see much of the profit yet, and I'm just trying to get the numbers higher, but it's super fun.
SPEAKER_00I mean that's the important part. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I think when we read now a lot of questions, and I don't want the podcast to be too long. Um, but before we finish, when this podcast will be published in the next one or two days will be our launch webinar of Publish Flow. So on the 19th of March, we will launch Publish Flow. We talked about it in this podcast, as in the last one, we talked about it, talk about it in my on my YouTube channel. So it's the thing we are working on. Me and my co-founder Roman, also Tim, helps us developing it. Um, we worked on for over half a year now. We put our entire heart into the project, and we would very much laugh if you could also support us there and at least join the webinar or yeah, test the software when it's launched. I think, or yeah.
SPEAKER_01I just wanted to agree. I 100% uh can confirm that. I'm very much looking forward also to the public feedback we're gonna get from for PublishRow. Like the internal beta tester feedback has been great, but I think the more minds come together on this project and give their feedback, and I'm sure there will also be some suggestions for improvement. That's also something I love about PublisherChamp. Like I re create guy, you give him a suggestion, he just implements it. And we also share that approach for publisher lead. Uh and we also share that approach for publish flow. So if you guys also have ideas on how to make publish flow better, um we would love that.
SPEAKER_00We we've learned so much from the beta testers, so we invited them to test our current features and like based on their feedback, five new features evolved immediately that we then implemented and tested again so that the software evolves with the users. Yeah. And yes, we think it's it's a great software. We think and hope it will um help you as a publisher a lot. I think it will or we think it will change the KDP landscape um drastically over the next few months. So, yes, if you have the time and can make it, we would really be happy if you are there and give us your your feedback. Your feedback on the presentation, your feedback on the on the software. Yeah, just uh support would be really appreciated.
SPEAKER_01100%. By the way, guys, if you've been watching this video until this point, feel free to drop what should they drop in the comments?
SPEAKER_00Um, not an ideas for other episodes to normally ask for. What do you want?
SPEAKER_01I feel like you can drop some keyword, we can make it super Tim. You can drop Super Tim in the comments if you've watched on this until this point. Also, feel free to uh give us your recommendation for future videos, any wishes.
SPEAKER_00And what what happens if they write Super Tim? It's just a sign that they watched until this point. If we do this on people's channels sometime. Okay, now I understand. I thought you built some crazy automization that they get, like an Easter egg. Message if they drop super team. Maybe we can do this. That would be that would be nice. Yes, yeah. Comment super team if you watch until this point or listened until this point. I don't know if does Spotify and these platforms have comments. Um if so, just drop a super timment there. They've also implemented comments recently. Yeah. Okay, nice. Then thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. And see you next time. See you next time, guys.