Yep, stock photos come with risks, and this happens all the time (hence we get to play this fun game every year), but it would be very difficult to do small-budget books (and that would be most books) without it. Photo shoots with models cost a fortune.

I wonder why this is “shameful.” Fair enough not to like the designs, but it’s apparently a good photo (actually two photos from the same shoot), used to different effect by each designer for three very different books. The very fact that this one photo got picked three times by different designers from the hundreds of thousands of candidates says something about the photo’s power.

I find that it’s not the source of the photo (from a shoot or stock) that determines the quality of the cover, but how well the desiger has been directed and how well they get into the book.