Im with you on the Snapchat development. Once many people got on there they leveraged it in really cool ways. It's very interesting how they turned an app which people used for nudes and what not into one that advertisers now pay toooons of money to certain content creators.
Huh, interesting to be in such blunt terms. Any product really is a testament to someone's bank account. That's pretty much the point of ~most~ of branding. The Ralph Lauren jacket is charging you an extra 1k for Absolutely Nothing, as well.
Do as much bottom-up research as you can at this point. Go to every single bookstore in your area and talk to the potential customers. If you can get an owner to let you have a stand at a bookstore for a couple days - the personal interaction will help a lot. Definitely use the feedback to iterate (not only based on 1 user, but try to identify trends in what they tell you). Go out there and set a goal to have 30users by next week.