Build it and they will come

“Build it and they will come.” A phrase that I remember from the Kevin Costner film, Field of Dreams. Ok so I’m getting on a bit, memory perhaps not as great as it used to be. Or the term has been used so many times elsewhere that my memory has been confused. According to wikipedia the phrase is actually, “If you build it, he will come.” The ‘he’ being a reference to a baseball player, I’m guessing. Not actually going to look that up. I’ll leave that to you. I heard that term some years ago in reference to building a piece of software or a business or a service or a ‘thing’ of some kind. Just build the thing and people will wonder how they ever did without it and flock to your door. Although the point is, they don’t.

I had this very much in mind when I began to build the Escape with a Good Book site some months back. That phrase and another one, Minimum Viable Product or MVP. Although that term may have changed in recent years. Build an MVP meaning build something that is only just fit for purpose, only just fit for its original intention, but also doing the right work to validate an idea. Don’t waste time perfecting it. Just enough work to get something that you can put in front of people and say, “Now how about that? Is that something you could make use of?”

Someone I know who I’ve not seen for a few years now was building a service for photographers. From what I can recall they were working on it for months and months. Probably more like years even. As I’ve not seen them for some time I don’t know if they’ve finished it yet. As far as I know, during the months or years that they’d been working on it they’d not put it in front of anyone who would actually use it. Now I could be doing them an injustice. It could be that they approached photographer friends and they thought that it was a great idea. My worry is that this didn’t happen, that they just ploughed on trying to create this perfect thing.

When I began I had a rough point in time in mind. A point in time where I felt I should have done just about enough to go to people, potential users, and ask them if they thought they could make use of what I’d created. My take on it is that Escape with a Good Book is now at that stage of being ready. Or virtually ready. We can login, create a wish list of books we’d like to read, offer our books to others, ask for books from others, pay for postage if we are claiming a book and arrange a courier to send a book to someone. I’ve yet to implement the points system, where you get points for offering books but I’ll likely work on that feature next.

I now find myself in the position where I need to switch my attention to marketing of the site. Trying to convince people that it is something that they can use and that it is something that they would want to use. This is certainly proving to be a challenge and perhaps more difficult for me than the work required so far to get Escape to where it is today.

Now that Escape with a Good Book is at a stage where it's ready for real-world use, I need your help. I'm inviting you to be one of the first to try it out. Your feedback is crucial to making it a service that truly works for readers. Would you be willing to give it a spin and tell me what you think?

GB