photos of books

[coachlang]

I thought it was a rule that when selling books you had to have a photo on the listing(?)

[tree*fern · Accepted solution]

In the past, used books had been a written exception to the rule requiring actual photos for used items, and eBay allowed sellers to use stock photos of new book covers for used books.  But that written exception for books was quietly deleted, sometime after 2013.  

The current written rule is that stock photos are supposed to be used only for Brand New items, with no exceptions noted for used books:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/picture.html

Placeholder photos are also not supposed to be allowed per the photo policies.  If you're referring to the noticeable placeholder photos that a large book warehouser with multiple IDs has been using on an enormous number of book listings, that issue has been brought up with eBay staff more than once during the past month:

http://community.ebay.com/t5/Weekly-Chat-with-eBay-Staff/Weekly-Chat-About-the-Free-Listings-and-Lis...