How Do I Accept Payments At My Book Signing?

I receive this question at my website often. How do I accept payments at my book signing?

Well the obvious answer is cash, but what about those folks who only carry credit or debit cards? If you think the majority of people are going to run to the ATM machine just to buy your book, you're going to find yourself spending a lot of time waiting and waiting and waiting for them to return to your book signing table!

Instead, there's a beautiful thing that I discovered back in 2005 called a cell phone merchant account that you can use to accept payments at a book signing. With this service you can process credit card payments from customers using your cell phone—nothing else is needed.

When you sign up for a cell phone merchant account, the provider sends you an account number for your business, as well as an 800 number that you have to call into in order to process the payment.

When you call into the 800 number it prompts you for your account number, the customer's credit card number, and the total amount of the transaction. The system will tell you within a few seconds whether the customer's card was approved or denied for the transaction.

It's not required, but as a precaution you might want to purchase a manual swiper and sales receipts so that you can take an imprint of the card and have the customer sign.

Click here to learn more about cell phone merchant accounts and select the "Touch Tone Phone Processing" option.

iPhone or iPod Option

If you have an Apple iPhone or iPod, you can also accept credit cards using this device:

(courtesy: Wired.com)

This is an iPhone credit card swiper (works with iPods too if you don't have an AT&T cell phone account) developed by a company called Squaredup. You have to download the Square app from the Apple store on your device and purchase the small swiper device from Squareup. Swipe the customer's credit card, wait for an approval, and then have him sign on your iPhone or iPad screen.

You can even purchase a bluetooth or wireless receipt printer to go with the device so that you can print a receipt for your customer AND take a photo of the customer holding the book he purchased with your iPhone if you want to eliminate the chance of disputes.


Both of these options are simple, straightforward ways to accept payments at your book signing.

Happy selling!