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Can You Really Sell eBooks On eBay And Make Cold Hard Cash?

by Ian D. Major

Selling eBooks on eBay, and making any worthwhile profit from doing so, is becoming more and more difficult. Gone are the days when you could sell someone else's books on eBay, and it's becoming considerably more difficult to sell ebooks that you might have written yourself or via Public Domain Publications.

Many people seem to think that ebooks should be freely available (because so many good ones are) and there are some excellent ebooks for sale on ebay but rarely do they sell for more than a few pennies. So purchase ebooks from eBay by all means, there's just no money in trying to sell ebooks on eBay.

There's also the problem of who owns the copyright to the ebook you are trying to sell. This has become so much of a headache that eBay has come up with it's own policy to try and deal with this situation.

Here's an Excerpt From Ebay's VeRO Policy

eBay's Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) Program
eBay's VeRO Program was developed to facilitate cooperation between eBay and rights owners protecting their intellectual property rights.

Highlights of the program include:

Expeditious removal of listings reported to eBay by over 5,000 intellectual property rights owners
Specific, detailed warnings designed to deter the listing of potentially infringing items before a listing is posted on eBay
Voluntary daily monitoring and removal by eBay of listings offering potentially counterfeit or otherwise infringing items
Voluntary daily monitoring and removal by eBay of listings that violate eBay policies designed to prevent the listing of infringing items on eBay
Ability to save searches and have the results emailed to you through Favorite Searches
Suspension of repeat offenders
Continuing efforts to identify and prevent previously suspended users from reregistering for eBay
Cooperation with rights owners seeking personal information on alleged infringers
However, because eBay is not an expert in your intellectual property rights, and cannot verify that sellers have the right to sell the millions of items they post on eBay each day, we need your help in identifying listings which do not appear on their face to infringe your rights.

To read the policy in it's entirety go to: eBay's Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) Program

Keep It Simple and Straightforward

Now there is a way around this that is easier to achieve than most people believe. The easiest way of making sure that you don't fall foul of eBay's VeRo Policy is:

Create The Products Yourself

The easiest way of overcoming peoples beliefs that your ebook should be freely availablen is.

Don't have your ebook look like an ebook!

So when is an ebook not an ebook?

When it is perceived by the visitors to your eBay Sales Page as something else. For example, if you bundled together your ebook with a printed version of the book, and or an Audio CD or Video DVD, your product would have a much higher perceived value.

You create a printed version of your ebook contained in a nicely printed folder.
You take a digital photograph of the cover of your printed version, surrounded by the audio CD and or Video DVD and use this as your Gallery Picture when you start to create your purchase It Now, eBay auction page.
You use the same picture or pictures throughout your eBay Auction sales page. People are used to seeing software generated ebook covers on eBay but by using the above method your product will not be perceived as an ebook.
In your sales page include the information that the entire package can be digitally downloaded by the customer if they wish.