The Experiment
A self-published book is the extreme case of a commoditized lever: millions of titles, identical tools, zero marginal cost. So we are betting this book on its own thesis — building its three fulcrums in public, over 90 days, with falsifiable predictions registered before execution. Win or lose, the results get published. An experiment that can only confirm is not an experiment.
The honest metric is not "sales" but "sales to strangers" — because the relational fulcrum is only verified when someone who owes you nothing chooses you. Attribution is configured per channel so the scoreboard can be audited, not just asserted.
STATUS: DAY 0 — PREDICTIONS REGISTERED · 90-DAY CLOCK BEGINS ON PUBLICATION · UPDATES EVERY 14 DAYS
12+ Amazon reviews (EN+ES) earned through a visible chain — declared review copies, zero purchased.
1+ earned appearance on a podcast or newsletter with >10,000 audience — won with the story alone, unpaid.
The book cited by a generative engine (ChatGPT / Claude / Perplexity / Gemini) in the 80-query baseline set. Not visibility — the activation of the creative-monopoly loop the book theorizes.
250+ FulcrumScan diagnostics completed and 75+ emails captured.
60+ total sales (from a baseline of ~9), of which 30+ attributable to public channels — people with no personal tie to the author. Stretch: 100.
If the predictions fail at day 90, the full post-mortem gets published with the data. The documented failure is also provenance — and, honestly, often better reading than a partial success.
Chapter 17 closes with seven questions every professional can ask to locate themselves in the architecture of leverage. Before asking anyone else to use them, we answer them for this book. The book provides its own day zero.
Honestly: ~9 sales, effectively all from direct personal links. Layer 4 (a product sold many times) in form, but with no public demand yet. Naming the layer honestly before anything else.
The relational. Material exists (entities, structured presence). Epistemic exists (the book is the framework). The relational fulcrum — being recommended by people who owe us nothing — is near zero. So it is the one to build next, and the one P5 measures.
The temptation is parameters: ads, price, posting cadence. The experiment is a paradigm move — building fulcrums in a fixed sequence and measuring whether they compound, rather than buying reach.
The provenance chain and the entity presence. Both keep working without us: the Wikidata entities, the published record, the framework itself once it enters the vocabulary. That is the asset; the sales are income.
Building — by design. Every act of the experiment leaves a dated, public, irreversible trace. The documentation is not overhead; it is the fourth fulcrum being made.
The relational work. Content and product were the comfortable parts. Distribution — asking, pitching, being told no — is the avoided front. The experiment forces it into the open and onto the scoreboard.
Probably everything. The hardest question in the book, aimed back at its own authors. The experiment is the 90-day version of taking it seriously.