Alas, some things are beyond my control

I came across the following very nice review of Teaching Dallas on Goodreads: Everything about this novella was perfect, except the cover. Neither of the cover models looked anything like either Dallas or Adrian. 

 First of all, thanks to the reviewer. "Perfect" is high praise, and gives me a big head that will last the rest of the afternoon:-). I will agree that the Dallas guy isn't quite as Dallas-y as I would have liked (though his cute grin did make me think of Dallas). I think the Adrian guy looks a lot like Adrian as I envisioned him (the cover artist changed his hair color a bit), but obviously the reader got a slightly different picture in his or her head, and that's fine.  I imagine that ten different readers reading a single book would have ten different pictures of the main characters in their heads.

But here's the problem. There is a really shocking lack of sexy m/m pictures on the stock photo sites (which is where I, and 99% of indie authors, get images, since most of us don't have handsome hunks hanging around for us to photograph). You can always go the route I used with the Dominance series, of using two separate guys and having a digital artist meld them together into one picture. Or you can do as I did in Innocence, and just use one guy. But if you want two guys lounging around in bed, your options are severely limited. I hope that some enterprising photographer will realize this gap and fill it, but for now, there's only so much one can do, and so many photos to choose from.

That being said, the best thing about being an indie is that I have control over my own covers. I can pick out the pictures and choose the artists I want to use. This means that my covers, even if not perfect, nevertheless make me a lot happier than most covers I've had through publishers. It's nice to have total control over the image I present to the world. It also means that if a cover sucks, it's my fault-- and I've re-covered quite a few books over the past three years because I wasn't happy with the original cover (most of the ones I've tossed were created by yours truly and have been replaced by more solid professional work). That's always an option, but for now, I'm happy with the Teaching Dallas cover. If I get a lot of feedback about it, though, I may eventually consider finding new stock photos.