We've all seen them, multitudes of listings promising extravagant claims of obtaining wealth and riches by becoming an eBook seller here on eBay.  As of the publishing date of this guide there were 16,080 separate listings for "ebook" on eBay and another 138 listings on eBay Motors, for a grand total of 16,219.  The majority of those 16,080 (9774 to be precise) were listed under the category of "Everything Else" and the subcategory of "Informational Products".

Your first clue that a scam is afoot:

The category of "Everything Else" should be your first clue.  Granted, there are many legitimate sellers within this category, but the vast majority of sellers in this category are little more than hacks and con artists.  In and of itself, "Everything Else" has been the bastion of novelty items such as "mystery auctions" and "get rich quick" schemes since eBay opened it's proverbial doors in 1995.

$$$$$$$ in Sales:

One of my personal favorite lines from an eBook listing is "Top Selling Platinum Power Seller with over $700,000 in sales in 12 months".  I quick glance at the sellers feedback rating and Power Seller status yielded exactly what I was expecting:  Although the seller is a Power Seller, he or she does not have a "Platinum" status and of their 61 eBook-related listings (in a thirty day period) only a hand full of them sold.  The individual sellers net sales of eBooks (by way of an advanced search) in a thirty day period was barely over $150 which, needless to say, falls well short of $700,000 (by about $698,000).

Reseller Rights:

Time and time again you will see the term "resell rights" (or some variant thereof) in the majority of these listings.  What this means is that once you purchase an eBook you then have the ability to resell the same item in your own auction listing, either as a straight auction, dutch auction, or buy-it-now (store) listing.  99% if the time what you are purchasing is little more than a few pages of cut and pasted material taken directly from eBay Help or from other eBay users Reviews and Guides (usually in .pdf format).

High Volume Seller Store:

Some eBook listings state that they will give you a 50,000+ or even 1,000,000+ eBook package for just a few dollars leading one to believe that they will receive x-number of individual eBook titles to choose from and resell at their leisure.  Ninety-nine times out of one hundred however, what one will receive is one (1) eBook title that you can list multiple times.  In other words, if you start 100 multiple-item listings with a quantity of 1000 in each listing you will have 100,000 individual items for sale...and so on.

100% Guaranteed:

When an eBook listing stated "100% Guaranteed" or "100% Satisfaction Guaranteed"....read 100% of the listing.  The fine print of the "guarantee" will not necessarily guarantee you a full refund if you aren't completely satisfied....or even a "store credit" for that matter.  A lot of times the fine print of the guarantee will state that you must show justification for a refund, usually in the form of "proving that your listings didn't turn a profit after utilizing our 'guaranteed' method of success" or "send us the links to three (or more) of your non-selling listing in which you used our selling method".  After they "review" your listing(s) odds are that you are NOT going to be getting your 99 cents back any time soon.

The rule of thumb:

The rule of thumb for eBook scams and cons is fairly simple: you get what you pay for.  I have yet to find (or even hear of) one single individual who has actually bought a house, paid cash for a Porsche, or even paid for a weeks vacation in Tahiti by simply selling (or reselling) eBooks.  The old adage holds true:  If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  Then again, eBook sellers are certainly glad that another old adage holds true as well:  There's a sucker born every minute.