Sad Life of a Book Cover Model

As I mentioned earlier, I have to read a lot of young adult fiction and when you inhale that simple genre in a short amount of time you notice patterns. I talked about authors earlier. This is another observation.

Recent young adult fiction catches the teen eye in one simple way: putting random attractive people on the cover. Here are the three most recent ya novels I read:



I have two main questions:
1. Who are these people?
2. How did they get themselves on book covers?

I am not the only one to have these questions. But in a much larger sense, I am. The five other people wondering about this just want to know how they can get THEMSELVES on a cover.

One man said many publishing companies get stock photos of people off websites like gettyimages and istockphoto. These people are paid whenever their photos are used.
The only other way to get on a book cover was through an "in" with the company or author.

So I guess the answers are
1. These people are either connected to the author or random models already online
2. Random/luck

But here's the real question:
Why are they all scowling?