{"id":7224,"date":"2017-11-29T19:22:02","date_gmt":"2017-11-30T00:22:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefest.com\/?p=7224"},"modified":"2017-11-29T19:22:02","modified_gmt":"2017-11-30T00:22:02","slug":"twowell-okay-30of-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thefest.com\/twowell-okay-30of-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Two\u2026Well okay, 30\u2026of Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, I received a shocking e-mail from writer and \u201cRock\u2019n\u2019Roll Detective,\u201d Jim Berkenstadt (author of <\/span>The Beatle Who Vanished<\/span><\/i>). Jim had been told by our dear friend, Bill Harry (founder of <\/span>MerseyBeat<\/span><\/i> and author of many Beatles books including <\/span>The Ultimate Beatles Encyclopedia<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>The John Lennon Encyclopedia,<\/span><\/i> etc.), that a website called NWCBooks.com was offering FREE downloads of the various books written by <\/span>almost all<\/span><\/i> of The Beatles authors who attend our Fests for Beatles Fans. As little as we make off of these volumes \u2013 most of us only write out of our passion for The Beatles, not to increase our income in any measurable way \u2013 now, we were going to make even less, thanks to the shameless rip-off of this criminal company.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the 48 hours that have followed Bill Harry and Jim Berkenstadt\u2019s revelation, two remarkable things have happened:<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

ONE\u2026we discovered that NWCBooks.com is <\/span>not<\/b> actually giving customers free downloads of our books. It is using the registration information of greedy book hunters to steal their credit card information and financial identities onto their computers. When the \u201ccustomers\u201d go to that website, they are told that for 48 hours, they can download free books to their hearts\u2019 content, but then after that, they will have to pay a minimal monthly fee, and yes, (you guessed it) they are asked to supply a credit card number. Once that credit card number is logged in, \u201c<\/span>Gotcha<\/span><\/i>!\u201d It\u2019s a phishing scheme. A con. (As we say in Liverpool, NWC is a \u201cYeggman\u201d\u2026a thief.)<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

More about that later. As Paul Harvey used to say back in the Sixties, stay tuned for \u201cthe rest of the story.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But TWO\u2026something magical happened along the way to solving this problem. Berkenstadt wrote to all of our other Fest authors (Gunderson, Robustelli, Stagg, Womack, Schmidt, Sussman, O\u2019Toole, Spizer, Boron, Berman, Whitney, Sterlace, Edelson, Duchaj, Leonard, Krerowicz, Buskin, Bedford, Rodriguez,) and I wrote to a few others (Hemmingsen, Baird, Lewisohn, and Davis) and together we circled the wagons. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Buskin, Leonard, and Robustelli immediately contacted publishers. Bedford located similar sites that were doing the exact same thing and alerted us all. (I\u2019ll list those for you at the end of this blog.) My husband, Rande, e-mailed Book Baby \u2013 a large e-book company \u2013 and informed them that they were being ripped off; he got them involved. Berkenstadt sent all of the authors \u201cCease and Desist forms\u201d to fill out and send in. Jim Berkenstadt also found a link to send to Google, to give them a \u201cheads up\u201d about this very serious problem. We all worked together to solve the dilemma.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And this is remarkable. <\/span>We worked together.<\/span><\/i> That isn\u2019t typical of all artists (be they authors, musicians, dancers, painters, whatever). In many cases, artists are competitive. Often, they are isolated and jealous of others in their field. Primarily, they work alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But in The Beatles World (a world largely held together by Mark, Carol, Jessica, and Michelle Lapidos who throw two \u201cclass reunions\u201d or \u201cThanksgiving weekends\u201d for us each year), we are a family. We reach out to one another, encourage each other, help each other sell books at our booths, edit each other\u2019s works, run ideas and historical mysteries by each other, ask for advice, introduce one another to primary sources that we\u2019ve encountered along the way whom others have not met, encourage each other, and in this case, protect one another. For authors to band together in this way is rare. The love of The Beatles is evident in all we do and in all we are.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That is remarkable. And now\u2026for the rest of the story. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Once we discovered that our PDF\u2019s (or e-books) were <\/span>not<\/b> being downloaded free of charge \u2013 that this NWC was a scam, a phishing scheme \u2013 we could have sighed relief, shrugged, and walked away. I mean, the foul shenanigans didn\u2019t really affect us at all. But none of us wanted to do that. Every single Beatles author was committed to sending out the paperwork and completing the email forms that stopped these criminals from taking advantage of those who loved The Beatles.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hopefully, no one in our immediate Beatles family would have opted to cheat us by downloading free copies of our books, but there are others out in the world who might have done so. And using our books as bait to hurt someone was repulsive to us. Even though it didn\u2019t affect us personally, our Fest for Beatles Fans authors continued to be proactive. To stop this.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That is the legacy of John, Paul, George and Ringo. We reach out to others in love. We act upon good intentions. We stand in the gap for our fellow man whether that means refusing to play for segregated audiences or visiting fans who were injured in the hospital (The Beatles actually did these things) or whether it means stopping criminals from preying upon those interested in The Fab Four.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Through this recent incident, I saw very clearly that the standards set by those four Liverpool boys are still being held high\u2026fifty-five years later. We are indeed a special group of people. And whether we are Beatles fans or Beatles tribute musicians or Beatles vendors or Beatles authors, we never forget the unique friendship and love those boys held for one another. It is the legacy that binds us together today. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Jude Southerland Kessler is the author of the John Lennon Series:\u00a0www.johnlennonseries.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Jude is represented by 910 Public Relations —\u00a0@910PubRel<\/a>\u00a0on Twitter and\u00a0910 Public Relations<\/a>\u00a0on Facebook.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, I received a shocking e-mail from writer and \u201cRock\u2019n\u2019Roll Detective,\u201d Jim Berkenstadt (author of The Beatle Who Vanished). Jim had been told by our dear friend, Bill Harry (founder of MerseyBeat and author of many Beatles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":7225,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[98,117,30],"class_list":["post-7224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-baby-boomer-beatles-blog","tag-jude-southerland-kessler","tag-the-beatles","tag-the-fest-for-beatles-fans"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefest.com\/?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7224"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7226,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7224\/revisions\/7226"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thefest.com\/?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefest.com\/?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thefest.com\/?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}