Unfortunately a lot of sellers are too lazy to take their own photos of the item being advertised for sale and instead either use a library picture or instead poach an image from another seller's listing and use it on their own advertisement. Personally if I'm looking for a particular item on eBay and I see a sentence in a listing reading along the lines of "Item shown is for illustrative purposes only. Actual item received may vary" then with the exception of something like a plant, where the seller has several of the same plant for sale, in which case it's not possible to get one that's 100% identical to the one in the photos unless the seller actually sends you the one that he or she actually took the photos of, I won't bother buying from that seller and instead will look to buy the item from a seller who has taken the time to take photographs of the exact item that the buyer can expect to receive, as well as providing a clear, concise item description that includes all of the relevant information that the buyer would need to know about the item being advertised for sale and which leaves no room for confusion, especially if there's also a line in the item description saying something along the lines of "The item shown in the photos is the exact one that you will receive should you decide to purchase it". At least that way if the seller has taken the time to do this, then when you see a listing that makes you go "That's the one I've been looking for!" you can then order the item confident in the knowledge that the item you're going to receive is likely to be exactly what you wanted.
With regards to buying books, if you are looking for a specific edition of the book and would not be willing to accept any other edition of the same book, then the best option would be to make a note of the ISBN* of the edition of the book in question that you want to buy and then go to a High Street retailer and place an order for the book there. I've done this myself in the past and have subsequently managed to get the exact edition of the book that I have wanted to buy. One way I did this not too long ago was when I saw the exact edition of the book that I wanted being advertised on eBay, but the front cover had a bad crease across it and the spine of the book was also badly creased. However, the seller had included a shot of the rear cover, which showed the ISBN number beneath the barcode, so I made a note of the ISBN, went down to my local branch of Waterstones, placed an order for the book and shortly afterwards received a brand new copy of the exact same edition of the book that I wanted.
*ISBN = International Standard Book Number, usually consisting of ten or thirteen numbers. Each edition of a book will have its own ISBN number - if a newer version of the same book is subsequently released the ISBN will differ slightly from the previous edition.
