- Joined
- Sep 17, 2018
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My upcoming release is a paranormal romance. My cover designer has made two versions of a potential cover for me (both with stock I purchased.) They match genre expectations in terms of what other paranormal romance covers look like (font, tone, muscley male model, etc) and look great. Version one had the model's face, version two had it cropped from the nose.
However, upon reading more, apparently all stock photo sites have disclaimers that any sort of "sensitive subject" use is not allowed for stock photos with models, and this would seem to include any sexual content in a book. (It is a romance, so there are a few steamy scenes.) Also not allowed are topics like substance abuse, sexual orientation, mental instability (it goes on and on, basically any source of conflict.) So now I'm kind of like... gosh... how does anyone put models on the covers of their books? I can certainly understand it from the model's perspective, and wouldn't want to use their image in a way that would be exploitative.
So if you can't use a model on the cover of your romance, but that's the genre standard... how do you make a cover that fits in and still makes it clear to readers it's a paranormal romance? What do other people do?
However, upon reading more, apparently all stock photo sites have disclaimers that any sort of "sensitive subject" use is not allowed for stock photos with models, and this would seem to include any sexual content in a book. (It is a romance, so there are a few steamy scenes.) Also not allowed are topics like substance abuse, sexual orientation, mental instability (it goes on and on, basically any source of conflict.) So now I'm kind of like... gosh... how does anyone put models on the covers of their books? I can certainly understand it from the model's perspective, and wouldn't want to use their image in a way that would be exploitative.
So if you can't use a model on the cover of your romance, but that's the genre standard... how do you make a cover that fits in and still makes it clear to readers it's a paranormal romance? What do other people do?