For the Brooklyn Book Festival this weekend, Papercutz will be in different locations on Saturday and Sunday, and that means other publishers will too. In yesterday's post, the Metro Tech location is for SATURDAY ONLY, and Papercutz will be at booth #3. Most Children's Day activities will be going on in the Metro Tech Commons. Sunday, the main day of the Festival, Papercutz will move outdoors to Booth 308, near the court house, and here's the map. It'll be beautiful weather this weekend, so hope to see you there!
If you're an indie artist or own a small business and accept credit payments, listen up: you need to be ready for the "Liability Shift" in 2 weeks. Basically, credit cards are moving towards having tiny chips inside them instead of the magnetic strip, which will apparently be more secure. If you have a Square card reader, you have to buy a $49 new reader to accept credit payments. If you don't, and you swipe a fraudulent card, YOU'LL be responsible for the lost charges, NOT the banks. It looks like getting the new reader is the way to go because it will protect everyone more. Granted, Square said they'll reimburse for the reader up to $49 in their fee credits after you use it for 3 months. However, their fees are very small, and I don't use the reader that much. I use it once a month for comic conventions, but actually most people pay in cash. I'm glad to have the Square reader though, because it does help like 20% of the time. But no way will I charge enough people to make up the $49 in small fees over 3 months, and will probably still end up paying around $45. So even though I pre-ordered the new chip Square reader, I feel forced into it.
This brings to mind that the way technology is going, we artists have to keep buying more and more expensive tech tools just to keep up. Adobe's new payment system has me and others locked into paying $50/month for the programs we need, and they have a monopoly because they're the industry standard. My Mac is pushing 5 years old, and is running terribly show. I fear the day it will konk out completely, because I can't afford a new one. This has already happened to some of my artist friends, and it's like a catch 22 - they can't afford a new computer or the programs they need, so then they can't get new jobs in their field. And because they can't get those jobs, they can't make more money to buy new upgrades. This is something that seriously scares me and I don't know the solution to it.
Thanks for listening to my little rant :P But it's the weekend - everything is better on the weekend!
