{"id":3974,"date":"2011-03-28T11:26:06","date_gmt":"2011-03-28T19:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=3974"},"modified":"2011-03-28T11:29:04","modified_gmt":"2011-03-28T19:29:04","slug":"square-card-reader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2011\/03\/28\/square-card-reader\/","title":{"rendered":"Square Card Reader"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Square.com<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Did you know you could lend Kindle books?<\/p>\n

Miss one day in the news cycle and you’re out of it.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t follow people on Twitter and you miss the heartbeat of the street.<\/p>\n

Friday night, Ian Rogers of Topspin retweeted Jill Sobule’s tweet:<\/p>\n

\n
\n"Need a Square credit card reader to sell merch at our sold out show in NYC – free ticket if you can bring me one!"<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This intrigued me on many levels.<\/p>\n

First, the fact that a fan could help a band and get a reward.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s how you bond to your audience today.\u00c2\u00a0 The idea that stardom is climbing to a higher plane and looking down upon the unwashed masses might work in banking, but not in music.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re not in the pit with your fans, you’re toast.<\/p>\n

Second, I like Jill, I’m always interested in what she’s doing.\u00c2\u00a0 She had one hit but soldiers on.\u00c2\u00a0 She’s talented, and she doesn’t complain.<\/p>\n

Third, what in hell is a "Square credit card reader"?<\/p>\n

Google is your friend.<\/p>\n

Then again, that judge didn’t think so last week, in the book decision…<\/p>\n

But it didn’t take much searching on the algorithm-based compendium to come up with the link above.\u00c2\u00a0 I recognized the picture, I’ve seen it at the Apple Store!<\/p>\n

When the Apple Store made its debut, Macs could not process transactions.\u00c2\u00a0 Now you’re in the store and the roving employees check you out at the table.\u00c2\u00a0 How do they do this?<\/p>\n

With that little white tab attached to their iPhones.<\/p>\n

But I thought this was only for Apple.<\/p>\n

Turns out anyone can do it.<\/p>\n

And sure, you pay, not for the reader, but the transaction<\/a>, but this is almost as good as the flying cars the future promised us that never arrived.<\/p>\n

Amanda Hocking is an idiot <\/p>\n

\n
A Successful Self-Publishing Author Decides to Try the Traditional Route<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You don’t get in bed with the big bad corporation.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s like believing the aforementioned banks are your friend.\u00c2\u00a0 They know little you don’t, they’re devious and they take all your money.\u00c2\u00a0 This is good how?<\/p>\n

Smart people do it for themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 Knowing that ubiquity is history and the arts are all cottage industry, it’s about a dollar here and a dollar there on your way to survival.<\/p>\n

First and foremost you’ve got to have something to sell.<\/p>\n

Vinyl, CDs, if you sign ’em people will buy ’em at your gig.<\/p>\n

Have a whole line of merch and put on your smile and sell it after the show.\u00c2\u00a0 And keep 95% plus.<\/p>\n

Are you getting this?\u00c2\u00a0 You’re your own business now.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve only got yourself to blame for your failure.\u00c2\u00a0 Do not listen to the mainstream prognosticators decrying how little money Rebecca Black has made.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, she’s thirteen and she’s famous and she’s made SOMETHING!\u00c2\u00a0 Better to sign to a label, be hidden for years, have your polished to a turd record come out and then sink like a stone?<\/p>\n

Marketing is b.s.\u00c2\u00a0 Your marketing is your product, yourself.\u00c2\u00a0 Rebecca Black just made a video, her FANS sold it.<\/p>\n

Well, maybe in this case, haters.\u00c2\u00a0 But that’s how you do it.\u00c2\u00a0 You empower sneezers to spread the word (thanks Seth Godin!)<\/p>\n

Like that Ben Sisario article forwarded to me by everybody about online royalties <\/p>\n

\n
Eminem Lawsuit May Raise Pay for Older Artists<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

IT DOESN’T APPLY TO YOU!\u00c2\u00a0 It’s for fat cat has-beens.\u00c2\u00a0 Good for them.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s like that guy winning that lawsuit about intermittent windshield wipers, good for him, but it doesn’t have much to do with drivers <\/p>\n

\n
Robert Kearns wikipedia<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And notice that Square also works with Android but not BlackBerry<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 BlackBerry is about corporations, locked down devices that the IT department can control.\u00c2\u00a0 iOS and Android are about changing the world!<\/p>\n

You’re all about changing the world, right?<\/p>\n

That’s how you truly make it in this business.\u00c2\u00a0 You have vision, that you won’t give up, that’s different from what came before.\u00c2\u00a0 And people are drawn to it.<\/p>\n

That’s what’s wrong with mainstream music today.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s all me-too.\u00c2\u00a0 And too many doing it themselves can’t sing and believe you should love their piece of crap song.\u00c2\u00a0 But when we find something new and different that’s good we tell everybody about it! That’s what you want to tap into!<\/p>\n

As for lending Kindle books, I was catching up on two days worth of the WSJ that I missed while traveling weeks ago and found this article:<\/p>\n

\n
E-Book Lending Takes Off<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Check out: <\/p>\n

\n
http:\/\/www.booklending.com\/ <\/a>
and
http:\/\/lendle.me\/ <\/a>
and
http:\/\/ebookfling.com\/<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Square.com Did you know you could lend Kindle books? Miss one day in the news cycle and you’re out of it.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t follow people on Twitter and you miss the heartbeat of the street. Friday night, Ian Rogers of Topspin retweeted Jill Sobule’s tweet: "Need a Square credit card reader to sell merch at our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13,2,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-music-business","category-technology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-126","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3974"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3978,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3974\/revisions\/3978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}