  The total area coverage by starspots is of interest for a variety of reasons,
but direct techniques only provide estimates of this important quantity.
Sunspot areas exhibit a lognormal size distribution irrespective of the phase
of the activity cycle, implying that most sunspots are small. Here we explore
the consequences if starspot areas were similarly distributed. The solar data
allow for an increase in the fraction of larger sunspots with increasing
activity. Taking this difference between the size distribution at sunspot
maximum and minimum, we extrapolate to higher activity levels, assuming
different dependencies of the parameters of the lognormal distribution on total
spot coverage. We find that even for very heavily spotted (hypothetical) stars
a large fraction of the spots are smaller than the current resolution limit of
Doppler images and might hence be missed on traditional Doppler maps.
