You may notice that I have different cover images here versus the ones on Smashwords. The ones here are the ones that I consider the full, canonical covers. These should also match other official imagery of characters.
There’s only one reason why I don’t use the “official” appearance of a character on a cover, and that is that Smashwords needs to be extra careful when it comes to erotica. They insist that models be “obviously” over 18, which is a pretty high standard. They generally want characters to look at least 30, based on the markers that I’ve had rejected versus accepted, but sometimes they need the character to look a little older than that.
I don’t write stories about underage individuals. Never have, never will. And I don’t generate images of underage people, at least not intentionally. All of my characters are adult, and look to be adult.
However, many of my characters are in the 20-25 range. I sometimes go as young as 18-19 but that’s generally not the case any more. But TV and Movies have ruined our knowledge of what people in this age actually look like. When they continually cast 30 and even 40 year old characters as teenagers and college kids, it throws things off. A 20 year old, or even a 25 year old, doesn’t have some massively different appearance.
So yeah. All images you find here are intended to be of adults. And most of them aren’t even “unsafe” anyways. But Smashwords needs to be cautious, and I don’t blame them.