There are lots of ebooks for sale on eBay and many people will refuse to buy them as they assume that they are just full of pages copied from the Internet or are just lots of useless information packed together for people to resell to make money. This is true for some ebooks and some people want to buy such a book which is fine. However I am talking about spotting an ebook which is just like a printed book but in ebook format.

There are some of these around and there are several ways to spot them.

Firstly look at the photo that the seller provides with the listing. Does this look like it has been professionally produced in order to provide a nice cover for the book or does it look like an icon or logo downloaded from the Internet. Most professionally produced books will have a nice cover.

Look at the description of the item. Does it seem to offer lots of information for a small price? Think about whether this seems too good to be true. Also if the item has resell rights. An author is unlikley to want people to be able to sell their book onto others without them getting any royalties.

Ask the seller about the book. Perhaps ask them if they are the author and whether they had the book professionally illustrated or laid out. If they did then it is likely to be a good quality book. You may also want to ask them if there are resale rights being sold with the book or even for an extract.

If the person selling the book is a business you get a cooling off period where you can evaluate the product and then return it if you are not satisfied. This is difficult with an ebook as it is not a tangible item and therefore cannot be returned (unless it was sold on a CD). However, you might like to ask the seller what happens if you are not happy with the book or the quality of it. As a seller of ebooks myself, I must admit that I would find that a very difficult question to answer! However, I am confident in the quality of my items and have not had any complaints yet so I don't think a refund would be necessary.