TONY HETHERINGTON: Help! My Beatles book is not giving me any royalties

Tony Hetherington is Financial Mail on Sunday’s ace investigator, fighting readers corners, revealing the truth that lies behind closed doors and winning victories for those who have been left out-of-pocket. Find out how to contact him below. 

Charlie Roberts writes: I wrote a book about my teenage friends, John Lennon and The Quarrymen – the band that evolved into the Beatles. The book was published by a friend, David Bedford, and is called Just Like Starting Over. It is on Amazon, and I received some payments via the publisher, but nothing now for over a year.

Tony Hetherington replies: Let me begin by explaining why you have allowed me to break my normal rule of identifying readers only by their initials. Quite simply, it would be impossible to tell your story when the slightest detail about your book would give the game away pretty quickly.

I contacted Amazon, and was told that while there are sellers who use the website to market your book, Amazon itself does not sell it.

Historic: John Lennon and The Quarrymen performing in 1957

Next, I contacted your friend David Bedford – which gave me an excuse for a trip down memory lane as we attended the same Liverpool primary school many years ago!

David is a prolific author himself, having written at least eight books about The Beatles.

He helped edit your book out of friendship, but David is not the publisher. He introduced your book to IngramSpark, a major company which operates a print-on-demand service. When someone orders a copy, your book is printed. There is no stockpile, unless some sellers had, say, a dozen copies printed at once, in which case they would have paid you royalties on a dozen copies.

The end result is that IngramSpark currently owes you the grand sum of just £26, which should reach you shortly.

Your book – and the iconic 1957 photograph you took of the young John Lennon performing on the back of a lorry at a street party – are a slice of history, and I hope your royalties soar.

Ryanair thinks I’m a travel agent and has ‘blocked’ me

M.L. writes: I made a booking online with Ryanair for my daughter and son-in-law to fly to France to visit me. 

The booking was accepted by Ryanair at a cost of £299. 

Next day, I received an email from Ryanair, saying the booking was ‘blocked’ as they had – wrongly – assumed I was a travel agent when I made the booking. I did try to identify myself to Ryanair, but this proved impossible.

Tony Hetherington replies: You live in France and simply wanted to foot the bill so your daughter and her husband could fly there to visit you.

This meant that when you made the booking, they were the named passengers, while the payment to Ryanair was not in their names. After being told the booking was ‘blocked’, you asked Ryanair to refund the £299, only to be told that in fact the booking was valid so no refund was due. All very confusing!

Grounded: Budget airline Ryanair ‘blocked’ a flight purchase to Nice

You gave me a copy of the Ryanair message you received. It asks you to pass this on to your daughter, and it says the booking ‘appears to have been made through a third-party travel agent who has no commercial relationship with Ryanair to sell our flights. Therefore, Ryanair has blocked this booking’.

I asked Ryanair to look into this and they told me you booked flights to Nice, with the outward flight on April 19. And they explained: ‘The day after Mr L purchased return flights from London Stansted to Nice, he received an email requesting that he verify his Ryanair account, which he successfully completed that same morning and had access to his account and subsequent booking.’

The verification procedure means that you took responsibility for whatever security declarations were needed regarding the passengers, as you were booking for them and not for yourself.

When you did this, you should have seen a pop-up message on your computer screen, confirming your verification and allowing your booking to go ahead.

You have now confirmed to me that you have accessed the booking on the Ryanair site and all is well for their trip.

If you believe you are the victim of financial wrongdoing, write to Tony Hetherington at Financial Mail, 9 Derry Street, London W8 5HY or email tony.hetherington@mailonsunday.co.uk. Because of the high volume of enquiries, personal replies cannot be given. Please send only copies of original documents, which we regret cannot be returned.